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The National Museum Of The Morgan Horse Comes To Middlebury

photo provided Photo Provided by The National Museum Of The Morgan Horse

photo by Mike Cameron Amber Raye Broderick

Tuesday March 29, 2011

By Larry Johnson

    Old Clem was 19 years old when he was drafted into the First Vermont Cavalry at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Three years later he was still alive and still fighting. Clem was a Morgan Horse and he was, like the other 1200 Morgan Horses engaged in the fray, a brilliant representative of the best of the best in horse flesh. Only 200 of the 1200 Morgans survived the war but they had, by their stellar performance, earned the respect of the cavalries on both sides of the conflict.

     Thirty-four Main Street in Middlebury is now the new home of The National Museum of the Morgan Horse, and Amber Raye Broderick is its new director.

     Amber was born and brought up near Buffalo, New York, and moved to Shelburne Vermont, in 1999, carrying with her a life-long love for horses that soon translated into a love for the Morgan Horse after her arrival in the Green Mountain State.

     Originally the museum was housed in Shelburne, but when the building was sold the museum moved to its Main Street location in Middlebury. Long associated with The American Morgan Horse Institute, the museum has been operating as a public learning facility for the institute since 1988.

     Moving to Middlebury, Amber told me, offered the museum a very positive location. First, Middlebury College agreed to archive the museum’s holdings, developing a research venue that was of archival standards and would allow researchers and the general public access to the rich history of the Morgan Horse.

     The Main Street museum will have full access to the college’s collection and will allow the museum the capability of rotating its collection, providing the general public an ongoing opportunity to view the rich historical tapestry of the Morgan Horse and its long association with Vermont.

     The move to Middlebury also affords the museum the opportunity to be close, not only to the college and its collection, but to the Vermont Folk Life Center, the Sheldon Museum and the Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge.

     The National Museum of the Morgan Horse is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 o’clock in the morning until 5:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Along with a truly amazing display of literature and photographs, the museum offers gifts and books related to the Morgan Horse. This is a stop along Main Street well worth the time.

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