Credit: Courtesy of the State Museum of Pennsylvania
To get around Pennsylvania's 1820 ban on horseracing, agricultural fairs hitched Standardbread "trotting" horses behind carts and had them compete in "exhibitions." More than 50,000 fans watched Sherman Black Hawk, a celebrated Morgan from Vermont, win the exhibition race at the U. S. Agricultural Fair held at West Philadelphia in 1856. Compact and strong limbed, the Morgan is one of the first horse breeds developed in the United States.
