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Tom Bass: Legendary Horse Whisperer
A great mystery of this world is why the name of Thom Bass is so little known today. His achievements in the realm of horse training and equestrian arts might be disbelieved in our car-crazy world, had not so many famous and respected individuals witnessed and testified to them as they occurred. Nevertheless, Tom Bass?s achievements are nothing short of legendary ? he truly was the horse whisperer of his day. He could take a violent angry horse sentenced to slaughter and train the animal to accept a saddle and rider without ever using a whip. More than any other man, he changed the way horses were treated all over the world.
That alone would make him worthy of his legend, but with the same air of confidence and dignity with which he won so many hourse shows, Tom Bass greatly advanced the position of racial minorities in America after the Civil War. never violent or confrontational with either horses or men, Tom Bass was the first to cross numerous color barriers in America, which he accomplished merely by being himself.
Tom Bass was born a slave near Columbia, Missouri, on January 5, 1859. His mother was the slave Cornelia Gray; his father, her master, was William Hayden Bass, son of the wealthy plantation owner Eli Bass. As was common in that time and place, Tom?s father never denied his slave son?s paternity, but neither did he grant him status above any other slave. While Cornelia was pregnant with Tom, William Hayden Bass married his fiancée, Irene Hickman. Cornelia then became Irene?s lady?s maid. Cornelia had no other children by William; Irene bore William one daughter and seven sons. As a young child, Tom remained a slave until he was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Civil War upset the fortunes of a great many white men and owmen in Little Dixie, as that part of north central Missouri was known back then. Eli Bass saw his slaves freed against hi will, lost a considerable part of his wealth and died, some say, a broken man. By all accounts, William Hayden Bass managed his share of what was left of the family property well and moved into business ventures in the city of Columbia, where he continued to prosper. Once freed, Cornelia sought employment in Columbia, but Tom and his maternal grandparents who raised him continued to work after the Civil War on another Bass family estate. Tom?s maternal grandfather, Presley Gray, had been freed before the war, and appears to have enjoyed more than a little respect in the community. Tom often cited advice his grandfather gave him, when sharing his own modestly expressed sensible opinions on both horses and men.
Find-a-Grave
He was a professional horse trainer. He was born a slave in 1859 in Columbia, Missouri, but moved to Mexico, Missouri after the Civil War, where he found work as a stable boy. Bass eventually became a trainer and established a reputation for training even the most wild, violent horses. Credited as a founder of the American Royal Horse Show. For a half century, Bass trained thousands of horses to prance, bow, curtsy, dance, do the cakewalk and dozens of other tricks. He invented (but refused to patent) a special bit that is still in use today to ease the pain that horse endured during training. Bass performed before U.S. Presidents Coolidge, Cleveland, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Taft. He was also honored by Queen Marie of Rumania at the St. Louis Horse Show. During his career, he won competitions at every horse show in the country, earned more than 2,000 blue ribbons and won championships at two worldâ??s fairs. For many years, he was the only African-American to exhibit at the American Royal Horse Show, where audiences remembered him as the high-hatted rider of Belle Beach, his most famous mare. There is a museum for Tom Bass in Mexico, Missouri, not far from the cemetery.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1859 - 1934 (75 years)