What are Beau Horses?

Barley

Barley

Well-Known Member
My ancestor Ellis Ashton, farmer of Osbaldeston, near Blackburn, said in his will of 1813 that his executors should auction his "household furniture, Beau Horses and all husbandry gear with my corn, winter grass and fog" [fog is another kind of grass].
I had an idea that Beau Horses would be Shire Horses or big cart horses, but the few things that come up on a well-known search engine look more like conventional horses, racehorses or thoroughbreds.
Anyone know what the meaning was in Lancashire in about 1813?
Barbara
 
I would guess a riding or carriage horse rather than a work horse, but I have failed to find anything online to back this up ...
 
Thanks, it's hard to find anything, isn't it? Although he's "a farmer", l wondered if he had some kind of carrier or carting business, or was hiring out riding horses. I will be looking him up on the Land Tax on Monday, so I'll see what acreage (roughly) he had.
 
I did a search on "Beau horse" and got results for "Beau sterling silver jewelry" - but that is a 20th Century U.S. thing.

I tried again and got a listing for an online equine sale site. I couldn't find a definition, but the horse ads flagged as "beau" all appeared to be "show quality" stock, as opposed to working stock or backyard pets. They were all breeds, genders, ages and disciplines - and the photos all reinforced this general idea.

"Beau" is a French word that is the root of our word "Beautiful."

I don't know the 1813 context, but my guess is that the "beau horses" were not meant for work, but more for appearance and may have been gaited pleasure horses.

Barb
 
I've never heard of the expression, but imagine it would be a finer type of carriage or riding horse, rather than a draught or cobby type.
 
Thanks, all. Yes, Beau might mean "good looking" horses or "beautiful" horses. I notice that his crops were grass and corn - all possibly used as horse feed. So was he running a stud?
I will probably find out tomorrow what his acreage was, but from whatever he was doing with it, he was supporting a wife, three unmarried sons in their late teens and early twenties, and two unmarried daughters. He owned some houses (three or four, I think) providing £10 a year rental income for his widow. His effects were £200, which isn't unusually large for a farmer, so he wasn't some kind of tycoon.
 
The term Beau also crops up regularly on sites dedicated to horse racing, and it could be describing a particular category of race horse.
 
Local agricultural show results in newspaper archives, maybe? One of my farmer ancestors came up in the BNA, with a prize-winning mare. I was then able to trace the bloodline and discover that he was a well-known horse breeder.
 
I thought at first that "beau horse" was a mis-reading of something more obvious (such as bay horse), or perhaps it was the name of an individual horse. However, I have found this reference to a "beau horse" in the sporting section of the Morning Post on 1 January 1863 - "The beau is light and airy. as all beaux ought to be". This suggests a racing context, but why should such a horse have been found on a farm? It still does not make sense.
 
euryalus said:
This suggests a racing context, but why should such a horse have been found on a farm? It still does not make sense.
Click to expand...

Ginger McCain kept his two National winners behind his garage forecourt. :)

Good find, Euryalus. Sounds as though they were almost definitely racehorses.
 
Bonzo Dog said:
The term Beau also crops up regularly on sites dedicated to horse racing, and it could be describing a particular category of race horse.
Click to expand...

It is possible (indeed quite likely) that the name "beau" relates to the lineage of a thoroughbred horse - such things being of great importance to horse breeders. The best way to find out would probably be to look at the Jockey Club web site, which will have links to other horse-related sites. I know that there was a famous horse called Beau Brummel, which may be where the name came from in the first place.
 
Thanks all for your suggestions. My ancestor Ellis Ashton wasn't talking about a single horse called "Beau", though, he was telling his executors in 1813 to sell by auction his Beau Horses (plural, with capital letters). So there were at least two, possibly dozens. (Thinks - his estate was £200. TNA's calculator makes that equivalent to a maximum of 19 horses in 1810.)

I looked him up on the Land Tax yesterday. He had about 50 acres in the Ribble Valley, said elsewhere to be good dairy land. However, I notice that his will mentioned household furniture, husbandry gear, grass and corn, these Beau Horses, but no "stock" (= animals like cows or sheep). In later years, with different tenants, the same land was called "Ashton's Farm" in the tax lists. They wouldn't call it that if it was a stud or racing stables, would they?

Oh well, it's always good to have one more mystery to solve!
 
Probably not relevant to the term "beau", but there was a carrier in Thurgoland near Sheffield who kept 2 white horses for weddings and 2 black horses for funerals. My grandparents were taken to their wedding in 1910 in a carriage pulled by Ernest Thorpe's 2 white horses. Probably not relevant but just a thought -- beautiful looking horses kept for special occasions.

All the best.
 
As a kid in the 50s, I visited the stately home of a well-known and respected family in Flint, MI, who displayed on one wall photographs of a young woman in the winner's circle astride a gaited horse. It was a 3-gaited I believe who took first at a show in Chicago in the mid-late 40s. Another horse's photo was their 5-gaited. I only recall the name of one of the horses (don't remember which) was Beau Brummel. A couple years later, I also met and rode horses with a girl whose Saddlebred cremello gelding was registered as Easter Parade Surprise and he had Peavine ancestry.
 
I asked the original question, about 10 years ago now. Thanks for your thoughts on this, but I don't think my Lancashire tenant farmer who made his will in 1813 had such thoroughbreds. He was illiterate, so all we know is the sound of the word he spoke to the clerk, and I have come to think he meant "bow" (pronounced "boe"). That was a dialect work for a yoke in some county areas. I think he had two big shire horses which he yoked together and used for pulling harvested trees out of the extensive woodlands on his farm. Local newspapers fifty years later still carried adverts for extensive timber sales in the area.
But thanks again. I now need to go and google for the meanings of 5-gaited and 3-gaited. Something to do with the way they trotted??
Barbara
 
Interesting! Horses and their contribution to our lives in so many ways make them all the more lovable eh. I personally dislike some of the practices used in 'show' horse competitions and am so pleased to see a movement to allow those high-steppers to simply go as their natural gait and tail lift without painful apparatus and ginger salve. And even here in the Midwest, friends had a matched team of white draft horses so good at that same work that when the older gentleman retired from such labor, men came down from Canada to purchase them for skidding logs Up North. One of them was the first horse I ever sat but I was so little that my legs stuck straight out and I freaked because the ground looked half a mile away. Ah, horses...
 
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