exerpt from:
BUD’S STERLING BULLET; STILL IN THE OLIVER FAMILY
by Franne Bradon

The year was 1923. America had recovered from the Great War and had entered a decade of affluence. Automobiles had become common, women’s skirts were shorter, and a period of prosperity ensued.

In 1923, a Marshall County farmer named R.H. Clark purchased a two year old sorrel stallion prospect. The colt was sired by Major Allen, a son of the noted show mare Merry Legs, both  bred by Albert Dement of the Normandy community in Bedford County. The dam of the sorrel colt was a daughter of Denmark Allen, later know as Roan Allen, making the colt a linebred Allan colt.

Clark offered the young stallion at public stud. With few telephones and no magazines to run advertisements, he did as other stallion owners of the time. He had stud posters printed and posted them at places where the mare owners gathered. The young stallion’s bloodlines spoke for themselves. Mares began coming to Red Allen’s court.

Twelve years passed. In April of 1935, a group of gentlemen met at Lewisburg, Tennessee, near Clark’s home. Their intentions were to organize a registry to record the pedigrees of Tennessee’s native saddle horse that was so different from the Saddlers north in Kentucky. The gentlemen, however, decided not to use the already familiar term plantation horse, but to coin a term indicative of the unique movement of the horses that they were breeding. They named the infant registry the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders Association of America.

Two years later, in 1937, R.H. Clark registered his sorrel stallion with the TWHBAA.

Several of the horse’s offspring already had been registered by this point. Clark’s Red Allen continued to be promoted by word of mouth and stud posters

The stout red stallion outlived his master. Upon Clark’s death in 1939, Clark’s daughter Sarah Clark Oliver inherited the old stallion. Her husband, Herman Oliver, was a farmer, breeder, and trader who supported his wife and sons through the products of the family farm. His philosophy being that everything was for sale, he insisted on showmanship at all times, that nothing would be presented to the public unless it was in the best of condition. Only one animal escaped Oliver’s sales list. Sarah Clark Oliver’s father’s stallion died the property of Mrs. Herman Oliver.

Although Herman Oliver did not keep a son of Clark’s Red Allen to continue the legacy of those bloodlines within his breeding program, other people did. The majority of grand-get of old Clark’s Red Allen, though, can be attributed to a son who was bred and kept all his life by one of R.H. Clark’s sons.

Jesse Clark raised a dark red colt by his father’s stallion out of a mare named Lizzie Allen, a daughter of Hunter’s Allen F-10. Foaled in 1937, this colt was registered as Red Bud Allen. As a two year old, Red Bud Allen was broke to ride, and even made a few shows under the training of Zolly Derryberry.  Jesse had a special relationship with this very intelligent stallion, not only  riding him and using him in the stud, but also teaching him tricks. During his life, Red Bud Allen sired 145 registered foals. The vast majority were bred in the heyday of the young breed during the mid to late forties, after the death of Clark’s Red Allen.  During the final years of his life, he bred very few mares, as the times had turned to the padded show horse, black was the color in vogue, and the bloodlines of the padded horses were those in demand. In the last years, when the old stallion was in his late twenties, he sired only five foals. Three of those five were out of a bay mare named Merry Man’s Star...