When the plantation was made at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636, the planters brought their horses and other domestic animals with them. In 1653 the General Court, at New Haven, made provision for keeping public saddle horses for hire, and all horses had to be branded. After passing over a period of more than a hundred and twenty years we find that in 1776 the average size of the Connecticut horse was thirteen hands and three inches, thus ranging below the other New England colonies. At that period it is found that the ratio of pacers and trotters was as fifteen pacers, or trotters and pacers, to four that trotted only. The very interesting experience of two English travelers, mounted on Connecticut pacers, in 1769, and their enthusiasm about their superlative qualities, will be found in its place.
The colony of Rhode Island was planted in 1636 by Roger Williams and his followers, and eleven years later they obtained their charter. Their supply of horses came wholly from the colony of Massachusetts, and in a short time the new plantation became greatly distinguished for the superiority and speed of its pacers. From the official report of the colony for 1690, we learn that horses constituted their leading item of exports, and that they were shipping horses to all the colonies of the seaboard. At that early day the fame of the Narragansett pacer extended through all the English colonies, and probably also through the French plantations on the St. Lawrence. All trade with Canada was strictly prohibited, but in the then condition of the borders how could such regulation be enforced, if a Frenchman, with a bale of peltry, wanted to exchange it for a Narragansett? Freed from the Puritan restrictions of New England, of that day, the Rhode Islanders developed the speed of their pacers by racing them, and thus the best and fastest of all New England were collected there. In 1768 the average height of the Narragansetts was fourteen hands and one inch, which shows them to have been about three and a quarter inches higher than the Virginia horses of the same period. They were not all pacers, for out of thirty-five there were eight that did not pace, and some others that both trotted and paced. A full account of these famous pacers will be found in the chapter on the Colonial Horse History of New England, and that on The American Pacer and his Relations to the American Trotter.