Morgan Horse
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40 free Morgan Horse trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Morgan is one of the oldest horse breeds developed in America, and its story starts with a single small stallion in New England in the years after the Revolution. Every Morgan alive today descends from him, which makes the family tree unusually easy to follow and unusually full of good stories. This quiz turns the best Morgan horse fun facts into questions: where that first stallion came from and how he earned his reputation, the breeds and bloodlines that followed, the Morgans that went to war, and the novels, films and poems the breed has inspired. You will also meet the farms, shows and registries that keep it going. It suits riders, owners, young horse lovers and anyone who simply likes a good animal story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing far more about this compact, good-natured breed than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Every Morgan horse traces back to one stallion, foaled in 1789, originally known by which name?
Figure
Figure was later renamed Justin Morgan after his best-known owner, and the whole breed ended up carrying the man's name too.
Q 02Which US president rode Justin Morgan's famous stallion as a parade mount in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1817?
James Monroe
James Monroe rode him when the stallion was about 28, an age many horses never reach, let alone on parade.
Q 03Justin Morgan's hard-working stallion lived to 32 before dying in 1821 from which cause?
A kick from another horse
A kick from another horse wounded his flank out at pasture, and the injury was left untreated.
Q 04Which author of Misty of Chincoteague also wrote the children's novel Justin Morgan Had a Horse?
Marguerite Henry
Marguerite Henry published the story in 1945, and it was a runner-up for the next year's top American prize for children's books.
Q 05Which film studio adapted the children's novel Justin Morgan Had a Horse for the screen in 1972?
Disney
Disney aired the film on its television anthology series, The Wonderful World of Disney.
Q 06Which New England poet wrote The Runaway, about a young Morgan colt alarmed by falling snow?
Robert Frost
Robert Frost has the poem's speaker watch the colt, left out in a mountain pasture in winter, shy away from the snowfall.
Q 07Which Confederate general's Civil War mount was a small chestnut gelding often described as a Morgan?
Stonewall Jackson
Stonewall Jackson was riding the horse, named Little Sorrel, when he was shot at Chancellorsville; it outlived him by two decades and died at 36.
Q 08Rienzi, a war horse of Morgan descent later renamed Winchester, carried which Union general in the Civil War?
Philip Sheridan
Philip Sheridan named the horse after Rienzi, Mississippi, where his men had skirmished, and rode him for the rest of the conflict.
Q 09Like most ponies, Morgans are known as easy keepers, a stable phrase meaning which of these?
They thrive on less feed
They thrive on less feed than most breeds, so owners have to watch a Morgan's weight: too much grain or sweet feed soon leads to obesity.
Q 10By the traditional account, how did Vermont's Justin Morgan come to own his famous stallion in 1792?
As a debt payment
As a debt payment, Morgan took the three-year-old colt home to Randolph, and within a few years the stallion was known simply as the Justin Morgan horse.
Q 11Besides keeping horses, Vermont's Justin Morgan was respected in the 1790s for which other talent?
Composing hymns
Composing hymns put his work into the tunebooks of the 1790s, and several of his tunes are still printed in the shape-note songbook The Sacred Harp.
Q 12Which public office did Justin Morgan, owner of the first Morgan horse, hold in Randolph, Vermont?
Town clerk
Town clerk was his post in Randolph, where he died in 1798, years before his small stallion made the family name famous.
Q 13Which Morgan stallion, born in 1833, was a grandson of the breed's founder and sire of the champion trotter Ethan Allen?
Black Hawk
Q 21Miners made use of sturdy Morgan horses during which nineteenth-century scramble for mineral wealth?
California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush miners valued the same speed and endurance in harness that had made Morgans popular coach horses.
Q 22Which arm of the federal government set up the US Morgan Horse Farm in Vermont in 1907 to improve the breed?
Department of Agriculture
Department of Agriculture breeders ran the farm until 1951, when it passed to the University of Vermont, which still raises Morgans there.
Q 23Which Middlebury publisher gave his farm to the federal Morgan program and compiled the first Morgan Horse Register?
Joseph Battell
Black Hawk covered more than 1,700 mares at stud in Vermont, and every Morgan alive today traces back to him several times over.
Q 14Morgan trotter Ethan Allen, a star of Currier and Ives prints, was also the model for a popular kind of which object?
Weathervane
Weathervane makers copied the trotting stallion, and after his death his skeleton went on show in a Kansas museum.
Q 15A Morgan mare named Maggie Marshall was the mother of the foundation sire of which gaited American breed?
Tennessee Walker
Tennessee Walker breeders trace the breed to her son, foaled in 1886, who had failed as a trotter because he insisted on pacing.
Q 16Shepherd F. Knapp, a Morgan trotter exported to England in the 1860s, influenced the breeding of which British horse?
Hackney
Hackney breeders valued his trotting ability, and the breed is now known as an elegant, high-stepping carriage horse.
Q 17Morgans were among the foundation stock of which American breed that now dominates harness racing?
Standardbred
Standardbred horses take their name from a time standard: early breeding stock had to trot a mile in under two and a half minutes.
Q 18The Morab, first bred in the late nineteenth century as a carriage horse, crosses the Morgan with which other breed?
Arabian
Arabian blood was added to give a finer carriage horse that was still sturdy enough for moderate farm work.
Q 19Justin Morgan's stallion stood about 14 of which horseman's unit, a measure standardised at four inches?
Hands
Hands are measured to the top of the withers, and at about 14 the founding Morgan would count as pony-sized today.
Q 20Morgan enthusiasts have long claimed which cavalry horse, famed for surviving Custer's Last Stand in 1876?
Comanche
Comanche has often been called a Morgan or part Morgan, but US Army records point instead to mustang lineage.
Joseph Battell was Vermont's largest individual landowner when he died in 1915, and he left his mountain forests in trust to be kept wild.
Q 24The American Morgan Horse Association moved its offices in 2020 from Vermont to a horse park in which state?
Kentucky
Kentucky is home to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, where the registry is one of some 30 horse organisations based on the grounds.
Q 25Where has the Grand National and World Championship Morgan Horse Show been held each October since 1975?
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City took over the October show from Detroit, and more than 1,000 Morgans now compete there each year.
Q 26Morgans were the first American breed to represent the United States at world level in which equestrian sport?
Pairs driving
Pairs driving puts two horses in harness to one carriage, work that suits a breed first prized as a fast, tireless coach horse.
Q 27Justin Morgan's founding stallion wore which coat colour, still one of the three most common in the breed?
Bay
Bay means a brown body with a dark mane, tail and lower legs, and only chestnut and solid dark coats are as common among Morgans.
Q 28Which spotted pattern, common in pinto horses of other breeds, has not been noted in Morgans?
Tobiano
Tobiano is missing from the breed, although three other pinto patterns are recognised and Morgans may be registered in any colour.
Q 29Which Morgan bloodline family is considered the purest, with no outcrosses to other breeds in the twentieth century?
Lippitt
Lippitt Morgans descend from the herd of Robert Lippitt Knight, a breeder devoted to preserving the old-time Vermont strain.
Q 30Justin Morgan Had a Horse was named a runner-up in 1946 for which American children's book award?
Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal runners-up were later renamed Honor Books, so the tale of the small Vermont stallion now counts as a Newbery Honor winner.