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English Setters
April 2017
Native Setters
When I was a kid we had all kinds of books in the house. I never knew
where most of them came from but we had everything from books on snakes
and sea life to baseball and poetry. One of the books I particularly loved
examining was an old set of Currier & Ives lithographs. Of course, at that
time I had no idea who Currier & Ives were. I was simply enthralled by the
colorful images from the past and how people once lived in America. I
loved the scenes of country life, the paddle boats on rivers, old-time
horse races in buggies, and all of the animals.
It wasn’t until recently that it occurred to me that Currier & Ives might
be a good place to look for 19th century images of dog breeds. They were
the chroniclers of popular culture in their time. Maybe their artists had
also captured some early versions of today’s sporting breeds? Perhaps they
even had some images of Setters?
If you’re not familiar with Currier & Ives, Nathaniel Currier and his
partner James Merritt Ives (who joined him as partner in 1857) were
printmakers in New York from 1834-1907. Their sons eventually took over
the business. Their artists traveled all over the country, which was still
expanding in those days, to draw scenes on sight. Before the Internet,
television, or iPhones, there were inexpensive, popular lithographs like
those from Currier & Ives letting Americans see their country. Yet the
quality of the work was so good that many people would frame the
lithographs and hang them in their homes.
To my surprise, it was not difficult to find hunting scenes or sporting
dogs in Currier & Ives’ works. I found a number of images on the site of
the Philadelphia Print Shop Ltd.
http://www.philaprintshop.com/currlist.html (used here with their kind
permission). It’s easy to identify some of these dogs from the mid-19th
century as Setters.
Most English Setter people today are probably under the impression that
Edward Laverack developed the modern English Setter all by himself. He
certainly played a crucial role in developing the dogs we know today but
there were other English Setter breeders at work before his time and as
contemporaries – and not just Mr. Purcell Llewellin. Laverack himself
details many of the other English Setter breeders of the time in his book
The Setter, written in 1872. Mr. Loyd Freeman, one-time editor of Field &
Stream and author of All Setters (1931), also provides good information
about some of the early dogs imported into the United States from Britain,
their breeders, and their subsequent careers. Many of these dogs were used
for hunting but many were also dual-purpose dogs and you can find them far
back in the pedigrees of our bench dogs today. Americans were importing
Setters before Mr. Laverack began breeding. Even while he was breeding,
Americans imported Setters from other sources – and not just from Mr.
Llewellin.
As for the Setters in America in the 19th century, author Amy Fernandez,
writing in the June 2014 issue of Canine Chronicle, suggests that the
English Setter may deserve the honor of being America’s oldest gundog.
According to Fernandez, the breed enjoyed a skyrocketing popularity in
post-Civil War America and set in motion all aspects of the sport of dogs.
She attributes their popularity to a growing postwar economy, a wildlife
population explosion after the war, and more leisure time for many
Americans of the era. It was around this time that Americans became
enamored of importing purebred gundogs. As we all know, the first dog
registered by the AKC was the English Setter Adonis. He provides a good
example of English Setters of the time. According to Arnold Burges in The
American Kennel Club and Sporting Field (1876), Adonis was a tri-color dog
sired by Leicester out of Doll – who was imported to the U.S. while she
was pregnant with the litter.
Prior to this time, however, there was no shortage of purebred hunting
dogs in America. Fernandez provides this wonderful quotation from Joseph
Graham in The Sporting Dog from 1904:
“For generations before the Civil War – that period coinciding with the
establishment of field trials and regular records in England – both
setters and pointers had been brought over at frequent intervals and had
left progeny from Maine to Florida as far as enterprising field shots had
penetrated…if a man wanted to breed setters, he seldom did more than use
the best stock in the neighborhood.”
The Currier & Ives lithographs seem to support this statement. Other
sources show that there were countless regional Setter strains in America
in the 19th century. These dogs were known as “Native Setters.” They were
widely available, adapted to local birds, and suddenly found themselves
out of a job with the new demand for more fashionable dogs produced by Mr.
Laverack and Mr. Llewellin. The race was on to improve the Native Setters
by importing dogs from Britain and Europe. Many sportsmen became addicted
to the newly-developed field trials so they wanted dogs that could compete
and win. Field trials and bench shows were both newborn in America at this
time, with the same dogs often appearing in both venues. Early dog shows
often included a separate class for “Native” Setters, as opposed to the
imported dogs, though the dogs would be interbred. It’s likely that most
of us have some of these “Native” Setters far back in the pedigrees of our
English Setters today.
There’s much more to this story of early English Setters in the U.S. with
the people and dogs involved, along with the documentation, but that’s all
the room I have right now.
I hope you enjoy these Currier & Ives images as much as I have. They
provide an interesting peek at what some of our Setters looked like in
America in the mid-19th century.
Carlotta Cooper
English Setter Association of America
Greeneville TN
eshever@embarqmail.com
423 639-6195