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Well into the sixth decade after Jubilee King's birth in 1927, Morgan breeders are in an excellent position to evaluate his impact on his breed.
Equine generations generally are considered to average seven years, though with enormously successful stallions - the 23-year-old- Northern Dancer comes immediately to mind - it can be far longer.
For centuries, this has been nature's particular gift to the horse breeder. A seven-year-old stallion usually has offspring that are reaching maturity and decent evaluation. If he is a success by then, the next 10 years will permit extensive use, providing the breed with enough high-quality offspring to allow discriminating choices among them.
During those years, one may take an even greater measure of a sire, increasing his influence through varying programs of linebreeding. It becomes possible with a 20- to 25-year breeding span, to concentrate the primary qualities of a given stallion - in essence, to choose among his descendants those with particular strengths, to cross back to those animals with a reasonable degree of success. This factor of breeding longevity, so very pronounced in the Morgan, has enabled breeders to identify and consolidate individual family traits until we have, in something less than 50 years, produced horses that are highly standardized as to type and conformation and highly talented as to athletic ability. Further, it has been accomplished using as major sources animals that were not, in any instance, present-day beau ideals of the breed. To this end, Jubilee King has contributed fully as strongly as any other individual. If it can be said that few men are prophets in their own time, then it is doubly true few horses are appreciated during their early years as they often are at or after the sundown of their lives.
Jubilee King was less than universally popular when he arrived in New England. Almost 15.2, he was materially larger than most of his breed peers. A light, bright chestnut with a lighter mane and tail, he was out of the common in color also.
His was an excellent example of "saddle-use" conformation. This term should be approached with care. In any breed used primarily under saddle, emphasis must be placed on neck length and its attachment at the jowl, well-defined withers and true balance of gait - gait purity, if you will.
No equine with a thick, tight jowl can flex easily at that point. He must either carry a low head or have a very low profile angle. He cannot comfortably maintain a high set to his head, with a nearly vertical profile, without a measurably open jowl.
No equine intended for saddle use may comfortably carry that saddle if he does not have well-defined withers. Additionally, no horse without balanced gaits, deriving power from the hocks, offers a rider comfort.
None of these points matter all that much if the animal is to be used solely in harness. Working with a breed whose early use was primarily as driving horses, it is important to consider those specific points of conformation that will enhance his success in saddle-use pursuits. There should be a clear differentiation in the breeder's mind between "saddle-use conformation" as it is found in the Morgan horse, and the "American Saddlebred type" as it is found in that respected breed.
Although his immediate family had produced numbers of truly excellent light and sporting harness horses, Jubilee King was distinctly a saddle horse.
He was very upstanding, with a pleasing degree of presence and a characteristic air of great kindliness. He was mannered and alert, but with a real interest in people, minus that degree of bumptiousness so often found in stallions. Other characteristics: A very small ear, well-set and well-carried, rarely laid back, whatever the cause. A calm, medium-brown eye; a head that was a bit lengthy for perfection. A long, very well-shaped neck, easing cleanly into the jowl. Good withers; a particularly strong loin and croup. A long, full tail, always well-carried. Good bone and good joints, albeit a bit straighter than average in the stifle angulation. Deep knees and hocks, with good motion off both ends. Rear pasterns just a bit short and upright. Feet good, with strong, deep heels; not large.
This good horse lived in the shadow of Mansfield and Ashbrook. Stronger and better across the back, loin and croup, and with a much longer neck than Mansfield, Jubilee King had less body depth and less wither definition and shoulder slope. He had a great deal shorter and stronger back than Ashbrook, and less classic a head.
In their company, Jubilee King stood equal; in his time, fully as many judges would have placed him ahead of those two as would have set him below them. In light of the present, he contributed to his breed, and to its modern needs, fully as well. Often called the triumvirate of modern Morgan sires, Jubilee King, Mansfield and Ashbrook do most truly represent most that was best in the three breeding lines.
The most prolific years for Jubilee King came early, with his breeders in Illinois. All of the Brunk family had descendants of the old horse, both sons and daughters, and all made good use of his quality and temperament.
An oddity of Jubilee King's get became apparent fairly early on. Some sons were in his "Lambert" image - tallish, upstanding, classically pretty horses. Others were made in a different mold - smaller, shorter-legged, deeper-bodied horses, of a type more in keeping with the old Billy Bodette lines behind his dam.
Juban was one of the former, as was that most elegant of horses, Red Vermont.
Captain Red and Juzan were the latter sort - strong loined, high crouped, fine tempered horses, progenitors in turn of several prominent lines of good bodied, highly successful show horses.
Extremely high, natural action was a well-known characteristic of this family of Morgans. Juzan's son Agazizz was a superior trotter, as were all of his offspring. The good stallion Illawana Don was a trotting crack, and could have taken on today's best in part harness. Allen Royal was still another smart-moving Juzan horse.
The clear, chestnut body color, sometimes with the roan of old Ben's Daisy in the flanks or over the entire body, with the creamy, café au lait mane and tail, was common. Some few were bay, fewer still black, though the sire of Jubilee King was that color.
Although Jubilee King's impact on his breed was greatest through his sons, certain families with one or more close crosses to him have done extremely well as producers.
The good mare Paragraph, winner in her native Illinois and again at one of the earliest of modern Morgan horse shows in Vermont, produced a number of winners for Frances Bryant's Serenity Farm in Vermont. Notable among these were Mansphyllis, five-time winner of the produce of dam class with son Parade and daughter Junestar, and full sister Manzanita, producer of excellence for Townshend Farm.
Squire Burger, half-brother to Paragraph, champion as a foal at the old National Stallion show in Iowa, always placed well in hand at those old New England shows, and won regularly in a variety of performance and breeding classes.
Junestar, by Squire Burger out of Mansphyllis, carried therefore two close crosses to Jubilee King and was one of the best-tempered and typiest of mares. Her body depth, excellent head and perfectly set-on and carried neck, as well as her high, balanced motion, made her a mare well ahead of her time in conformation. Her good son, Merry Minstrel, carrying still more crosses to Jubilee King through great-granddam Easter Maid, is very probably as near to old Jubilee King, in actual physical resemblance, as any horse currently living.
Although he has fewer crosses to Jubilee King, and those solely through his dam, Royal Fleetson is another living sire that greatly resembles Jubilee King. And this is not, in either case, just a matter of color, but of neck length, of style and physical presence, of disposition, and of that singularly strong and level loin and croup, which comes to us so faithfully from no other line.
The blood of Jubilee King has melded well with several other strong Morgan families, most particularly that of the Bennington-Mansfield "Government" line. The first-cross matings were made many years ago and are receding onto the far right-hand edge of present day pedigrees, but they remain important to us. The Panfield cross on the Theis Co. mare band in Kansas is a good example. The cross, in the opposite direction of a Jubilee-line sire on Querido mares on the Shaw Ranch in Washington state is another. Payday and Townshend Gaymeade, used on L.U. Sheep Co. mares, produced some very fine show horses. Mansfield on Paragraph was a notable individual cross.
Government-bred Fleetwing on a daughter of Allen Royal resulted in World Champion Stallion Royal Fleetson and incited a present-day search for similarly bred mares to repeat the cross. Fewer direct-line crosses were made between Ashbroook and Jubilee King, but second and third-generation combinations worked very well. Son Jubilee's Courage, bred to several old-line Lippitt mares, sired the highly successful breeding horses Clement and Criterion, as well as a number of good fillies. These horses all had a great deal of old King's "pretty" and were deep-bodied, typey Morgans with uniformly excellent heads. Triple-play combinations of Jubilee King, Mansfield and Lippitt have worn well. Whippoorwill Duke and the Merry Knox-Conniedale-Belldale horses are highly successful foundation animals.
It is not possible to list every son of that great old sire that has had his mark on our breed. Nor every mare. But whenever you see a modern Morgan champion - little ears on a high-set head; really long and upstanding neck; fine going action; and, best of all, that strong, short back with its deep loin and croup and high-set tail - you can bet safely that if its pedigree is free of outside blood, it will carry one or many lines back to Jubilee King.
And if he also has that grand, obliging, "Great Gentleman" temperament, then it's no bet at all, but a sure thing!
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