W
hen traveling down the back roads in
rural Weybridge, visitors are often
awestruck when the countryside opens up
to a verdant, sweeping lawn and the farm’s stunning,
white Victorian barn. A life-size bronze statue of
‘Figure’ stands proud before the home of the oldest,
continuous Morgan horse breeding farm in the
world. Middlebury, Vermont publisher Joseph Battell
commissioned the Weybridge Stock Farm in 1878
By Margot Smithson
This Page: Photo by Margot Smithson
4
Vermont Magazine
Summer 2019
to house his collection of the era’s finest Morgans.
Joseph spent years researching and recording
Morgan horse lineage, publishing the first Morgan Horse
Registry, a document of Morgan bloodlines without
which the integrity of the breed would have dissolved
over time. Their reputation as preferred cavalry horses
led the U.S. government to mandate the creation of a
Morgan remount program in 1904, and Joseph seized
the opportunity to continue his breeding program.