1966-Voice Of The Tennessee Walking Horse 1966 December Voice | Page 36

MIDNIGHT SUN 410751
The Horse of the Century
1940-1965
THE CHAMPION UNDER S.ADDLE
THE CHAMPION AS A SIRE
THE CHAMPION OF THE BREED
■liDMGHT SUN No. 410751
0F
the century
1940 —~ 1965
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The above inscription is on a monument placed at
Harlinsdale Farm, near Franklin, Tennessee, over the
grave of Midnight Sun. This dedication to a great horse
will impress deeply in the mind and memory of people
who knew him, those who know of him, and those who
will learn of him in the future. Midnight Sun was the
Adios of the Tennessee Walking Horse breed. He was an
all-time super-fantastic horse of all the breeds. Midnight
Sun is one of the most gigantic names the horse world has
ever known and the most renowned of all the Tennessee
Walking Horse breed. He was foaled in the spring of
1940 in Viola, Tennesse, and died at Franklin, Tennessee,
in the fall of 1965, having lived his entire life of a quarter
of a century in Middle Tennessee. He was owned in the
State of Tennessee the first 16 years of his life at which
time he was sold to Mrs. G. M. Livingston and daughter
Geraldine, of Quitman, Georgia, who owned him until he
died. However, from the time Harlinsdale bought him
in 1944 he never left this farm except for show purposes,
his last trip being in 1962. He was as much a part of the
Volunteer State as any horse was of any other state in the
nation. When his show ring days were over, he did not
disappear into oblivion. He started another era that was
to become even a brighter page in the history of the
breed.
36
fl,
Midnight Sun lived his glory in the show ring as a
World’s Grand Champion in 1945 and 1946, but he added
far more luster and brilliance to the Tennessee Walking
Horse breed as a sire. No recorded blood of any other
horse of any breed has produced as great a number of
World’s Grand Champions. Seven times his get have won
this greatest of all honors in the show ring and five times,
his grandsons have left the ring wearing the crown and
twice a great-grandson. Fie was the first stallion to be­
come World’s Grand Champion of this breed. He had
sired approximately 2,000 foals in his twenty years of
standing at stud. His sons, grandsons, great-grandsons and
female olfspring too are proving themselves to be sires and
dams of champions. Since Midnight Merry, the first off-
spring of Midnight Sun to win the World’s Grand Cham­
pionship in 1949, until the present day, horses descended
from Midnight Sun in straight male line have won the
honor, the gold and the silver fourteen times. Other horses
have won it but only four.
There is a reason for the telling of his blood and what
better reason is there than to say, his running walk was
pei lection itself. No horse living or dead has executed a
more honest-to-goodness perfect true and square running
walk. Read well, you scholars of this gait that made the
Icnnessee Walking Horse breed. Be impartial, let not the
VOICE of the Tennessee Walking Horse