In Farmer Boy (Chapter 21, “County Fair”), Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote:

Beyond them were three large, speckled gray horses. Their haunches were round and hard, their necks were thick and their legs were heavy. Long, bushy hair hid their big feet. Their heads were massive, their eyes quiet and kind. Almanzo had never seen anything like them.

Father said they were Belgians. They came from a country called Belgium, in Europe. Belgium was next to France, and the French had brought such horses in ships to Canada. Now Belgian horses were coming from Canada into the United States. Father admired them very much. He said:

“Look at that muscle! They’d pull a barn, if hitched to it.”

Almanzo asked him:

“What’s the good of a horse that can pull a barn? We don’t want to pull a barn. A Morgan has muscle enough to pull a wagon, and he’s fast enough to pull a buggy, too.”

“You’re right, son!” Father said. He looked regretfully at the big horses, and shook his head. “It would be a waste to feed all that muscle, and we’ve got no use for it. You’re right.”

Almanzo felt important and grown-up, talking horses with Father.

The trouble is, this isn’t exactly how Belgian draft horses came to America.

Belgian horses are direct descendants of the “Black Horse of Flanders,” which existed prior to 200 B.C. and the time of Julius Caesar. The first Belgians were brought to the United States in 1866 by Abram Van Hoorebeke, a Belgian doctor living in Monmouth (Warren Co.) Illinois. Since Almanzo has his ninth birthday before the county fair mentioned in Farmer Boy, the year in question would have indeed been 1866. While it’s possible that these first horses appeared at the Franklin County Fair when Almanzo Wilder was a young boy, I’m not sure it’s all that probable. About all I have been able to figure out so far is that Dr. Van Hoorbeke arrived with his horses at a port in New York, but he apparently headed west with them immediately.

Belgian draft horses didn’t catch on in a hurry. The Belgian Draft Horse Corporation of America wasn’t formed until February 1887, and all Belgians in the United States prior to this time were registered in Europe. It was slow going until the 1903 World’s Fair in St. Louis, where an exhibit of Belgian horses attracted lots of attention.

It wasn’t until after World War I that the breed became popular, as American farmers wanted a compact and economical draft horse (the typical Belgian sold for around $200 at the time). The typical Belgian stood 16 to 17 hands tall, with some up to 18 hands. The average weight was from 1,700 to 2,000 pounds. The Belgian was called “cold blooded” – meaning that it was even-tempered – and also an “easy keeper,” because of the lack of feathering – or long hair – on their lower limbs. But note that Wilder wrote that the horses Almanzo saw had long, bushy hair that hid their feet!

In the existing manuscript for Farmer Boy, Wilder wrote:

Next there were some large, gray horses with thick, strong legs and large feet hidden in long, bushy hair, their heads looked heavy and their eyes were quiet and kind. Father said they were —– some had been brought in from Canada. Father admired them, but Almanzo did not like them nearly so well as the Morgans.

There is no breed of horse given; Wilder simply left a blank space. Most likely, the breed Laura Ingalls Wilder meant was the Clydesdale, first brought to North America by Scottish immigrants to Canada around 1850. There was a major importation of Clydesdales to the United States after the Civil War, and some of the breed had undoubtedly crossed the northern border into America even earlier.