BROOKLINE — Southern Vermont's oldest continuous horse show will mark its 75th edition on Saturday, July 2, starting at 8:30 a.m., at West River Stables at Meadowbrook Farm, 102 Hill Rd., rain or shine.
As always, the NewBrook Horse Show's proceeds benefit the volunteer NewBrook Fire Department serving Newfane and Brookline, two towns that share a ZIP code and a long history.
Show officials trace the first show back to 1941 when George Church Ware (1880-1977) ran West River Camp, a riding stable and lodge for “gentile clientele” across the street from George and Chris Osgood's bicentennial Meadowbrook Farm.
That May, the Brookline Protective Association, a precursor to the NewBrook Fire Department, appointed a three-person committee to look into adding a fund-raising fair to Ware's successful and very popular West River Camp Horse Show to be held that July.
Since its inception in 1935, the Brookline Protective Association never had more than $92.91 (equivalent to about $1,600 today) in its treasury despite running benefit dances, minstrel shows, parties, movies, and auctions. Now they wanted to hitch their wagon to this horse show.
They put George Ware himself and his neighbor, George Osgood, on the committee along with Harry Howe. But the minutes from the association's June 1941 meeting were curt and to the point: “Comm[ittee] Reported unfavorable. Meeting Adj[ourned].”
Maybe both neighbors needed a second cutting of hay and couldn't spare their fields for fair tents and booths. But from that show on, George Ware donated the show's proceeds to the town firefighters. An article in the Brattleboro Reformer said that the July 27, 1941, show would be the eighth West River Camp Horse Show.
In that same Reformer that described that year's horse show, women's silk dresses advertised for $1.19, three pounds of coffee for 43 cents, and a night at the Avery Hotel in Boston (with bath and shower!) for $2.50. The paper was publishing selective-service draft numbers and ran a story about a father-and-son team enlisting in the armed forces.
In 1948, the Brookline Protective Association dissolved in order to immediately re-form with members from Newfane to become the NewBrook Fire Department. The West River Camp horse show adopted the fire department's new name. For years, the show continued to be held at West River Camp, which became West River Lodge. Then, for years, the show moved to a field beside the Newfane School off Route 30.
World-class centered-riding instructor Lucile Bump, proprietor of Southmowing Stable in Guilford, first exhibited at the New Brook show when she was 16, nearly sixty years ago.
She remembers riding her big black horse, Cricket, the 22 miles from her Halifax home to Brookline the day before the show and then riding back home the next day.
“That's just the way it was done back then!” she said. “No one had horse trailers.”
At another NewBrook show, she shared her riding boots with her friend, Linda Manuel, who didn't have any. Between classes, they scrambled to switch shoes and boots.
For several years in the 1960s, Bump trained an eight-horse junior drill team to perform during the lunch break. The late Sally Swift, founder of Centered Riding, would come to practice her teaching methods on the young drill team riders, and to ride her last horse, Stormy.
When the NewBrook Fire Department started the NewBrook Field Days beside the Newfane Elementary School in the 1950s, the horse show moved to be with it.
When the Field Days ceased to exist, the show returned to Hill Road in Brookline and is now held at Howard Osgood's historic Meadowbrook Farm, with its beautiful fields before the rolling hills which have been in Osgood's family for five generations.
In 1768 Howard's great-great-great-grandfather, Deacon Jonathan Park, then 25 years old, moved to Vermont from Massachusetts, cleared his lot on Newfane Hill and built Newfane's first frame house. Park gave Newfane its common to build its courthouse on, and Howard Osgood still has the right to graze his cows there, though he doesn't. Park also donated land off Newfane's Cemetery Road for use as a cemetery and Osgood has the right to be buried there, but he says he won't be.
Osgood sold his herd of Holsteins in 1992 and went into the riding-stable business with his friend, Roger Poitras, who for years ran the riding program at West River Lodge, which operated as a riding school and public stable into the 1990s.
People could stay at the lodge, take riding lessons, and go on trail rides. Poitras is now horse trainer and riding instructor at West River Stables at Meadowbrook Farm, which has hosted the New Brook Horse Show since 1999.
Poitras, one of the organizers on the show committee, said it's exciting to be once again hosting this beloved historic horse show.