In 1945, when Marguerite Henry wrote the young readers’ book Justin Morgan Had a Horse, it was a softer and more fanciful version of the harsh realities faced by a sick singing master, Justin Morgan, and his little stallion, Figure, who lived in the frontier outpost of Randolph Center, Vt., 220 years ago.
IN MOVIE FORM
Thirty-seven years after Henry’s book was published, Walt Disney Productions used that book as a template for a 1972 movie by the same name, chronicling the early life of young Figure and glossing over the fact that his owner, Justin Morgan, was ill with tuberculosis and would die in 1798 at the age of 51, only a few years after the scenes depicted in the movie.