As fate would have it, the first person to define the American Quarter Horse as a breed was an English aristocrat named William Anson. Starting in 1910, Anson wrote a series of articles describing how many ranch horses shared common bloodlines and characteristics. He went on to assert that this breed could be traced “to colonial times.”
William Anson was born to Thomas Anson (the 2nd Earl of Lichfield) and Lady Harriett Georgina Louisa. The family was among the most distinguished in England. Back in the 1700s, William’s ancestor Admiral Sir George Anson made a name for himself as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Admiral Anson proved equally suited to peacetime– when he was notable for “restoring discipline in the navy and freeing it from corruption”– and to war. His finest hour came during the First Battle of Cape Finisterre, where he led an attack on thirty French ships and took £300,000 of treasure (at least $100 million today). He capped his career by circumnavigating the globe and winning a seat in Parliament.
A few decades later, William Anson’s grandfather Thomas was made an earl by King William IV (every first-born Anson son since 1795 has been named Thomas). Besides serving as the Royal Master of the Buckhounds (1830-1834) and the Postmaster General (1835-1841), Thomas was a prodigious gambler. He ultimately racked up around £600,000 in debts. Luckily, though Thomas was forced to sell almost everything he owned, he was able to hang on to the family home at Shugborough Hall.
By the time William was born in 1872, the Ansons had regained their financial footing. They would ultimately own around 40,000 acres of land. However– as the eleventh of thirteen children– William stood to inherit very little.
He did not let that stand in his way. After a childhood spent around “fine horses,” Anson “came to the New World [in the early 1890s]… to seek his fortune.” He spent his first few years in America at an older brother’s Texas ranch, learning about the rugged cow ponies and adapting to the very different way of life. For Anson– “an experienced horseman and a devotee of polo”– it must have been a kind of paradise. “It is said,” wrote Bob Denhardt in the Western Horseman, “that although he became a real westerner in the best sense of the word, he…
