Where the Fun Begins!

I love history, always have. And I especially enjoy reading and learning about the history of our registry and the ponies, miniature horses, & people that were all a part of making ASPC/AMHR what it is today. We were very blessed to know Carolyn Roberts, RFP Family Ponies, and to call her a friend. She was fascinating to listen too and she was always willing to share the knowledge she had with us, whether in person or on the phone. I remember a sunny summer afternoon in July in Carolyn’s kitchen soaking up history, stories, & good pony fellowship. We met Carolyn’s husband Harold that day and he was a wealth of knowledge too. He wasn’t at the shows much during the time that Ray & I began showing our shetlands, but he sure knew his ponies and he knew about training. Ray & I still today will talk about a training tip that Harold shared with us on that summer afternoon. It is one of my fondest memories of good times with people we enjoyed. Carolyn had several duplicate sets of American Shetland Pony Journals as well. She had sorted through them and so we came home with a boxful of old Journals. The oldest Journal we have is June, 1954. The editor was James H. Roberts (no relation to the Roberts mentioned above that I’m aware of) and the president of the association was E.T. Sproull of Bristolville, OH. There are several ads in the magazine for Pony sales and several breeders listed in the breeder’s directory. One of the things I find intriguing is that the majority of the shetlands pictured resemble the B Miniatures of today, in my opinion anyway. One of the articles that I found most interesting  was entitled ‘The Shetland Revival-Rebound from the ’36 Rockbottom…”  Among the facts and figures and names that make up the leadership, membership and registration throughout the years, the article also states this “The work of the type committee was climaxed on July 5, 1947, when a Shetland Pony Type Conference was held at Des Moines, Iowa. This has come to be known as the Shetland Pony Congress”.  It’s a fascinating article sharing history before the magazine’s publication date and a glance back at the story of the ASPC/AMHR. And of course I should mention that we had to look at ponies that day at the Roberts and yes, we did buy one later that fall that we had both been drawn too – our Modern Shetland gelding RFP Change of Luck.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 4th, 2011 at 6:55 pm and is filed under ASPC/AMHR History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.