...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.
Foaled in the fifties, Merry
Man’s Star was not registered until 1965. In 1965,
however, the breeders association changed its
registration rules. All foals had to be registered
during the year that they came, and any adult horses
whose paperwork was not in order had to obtain
registration certificates then, or be reduced to grade
horse status. Leon Oliver, who had returned from Army
service, made the choice to produce a foal by his
uncle’s horse out of Merry Man’s Star. The bay mare
went to the Delina area of Marshall County
for a tryst with Red Bud Allen for three consecutive
years.
The
first product of the mating of Red Bud with Starr was
a filly. The next two years, in 1966 and 1967, Oliver
was more successful in obtaining the stud colts that
he wanted, first in 1966, then in 1967, another colt
arrived posthumously. He became Red Bud’s Rascal. When
Oliver lost the older colt, it remained to Red Bud’s
Rascal to carry forward the equine heritage of his
sire and his grandsire.
Red
Bud’s Rascal had been foaled the spring after the
victory of the four year old stallion
Shaker’s Shocker in
the Grand Championship Stake at the Tennessee Walking
Horse National Celebration. An extremely popular
winner with his petite blond owner and trainer in the
irons, Shocker inspired a surge of popularity for the
padded show Tennessee Walking Horse. Interest in the
kegshod registered horses was at another all-time low.
Red Bud’s Rascal arrived with the wrong gait genes,
the wrong pedigree, and the wrong color to attract any
interest from the vast majority of mare owners in the
vicinity of his home barn...
