from “Legends Volume 2” by Jim Goodhue, Frank Holmes, Phil Langston, Diane C. Simmons
this specific article was written by Frank Holmes
For almost as long as there have been organized rodeos, there have been Oklahoma Star-bred horses at, or near, the top in every event that required a contestant to be well-mounted.
In fact, someone once said that there were only two real sires of rope horses in Oklahoma and that Oklahoma Star was both of them.
While this might have been overstating the case a bit, it does illustrate the high esteem of Oklahoma Star and his descendants held by rodeo contestants and ranch cowboys.
Oklahoma Star was foaled in 1915 near Slapout, Oklahoma on the farm of his breeder, Tommy Moore. Slapout lies in the “No Man’s Land” of the Oklahoma panhandle, and Moore had moved there from Mulhall, Oklahoma, a small community north of Guthrie, in 1905 or 1907. After renting a place for a year, he homesteaded a farm of his own, where he raised the finest Percheron horses and the fastest race horses in the country.
One of Moore’s most prized runners was a mare by the name of Cutthroat. She received her unusual name as the result of running into a barbed wire fence as a foal and severely injuring her trachea.
Cutthroat’s breeding has always been, and will always be, a controversial subject. To begin with, not even her name remained constant throughout her life. In addition to Cutthroat, she was know at various times as May Mattison and as Bee Vee.
Early accounts give her sire as Bonnie Joe (TB), and her dam as Big Em, by Rocky Mountain Tom. She has also been listed as being sired by Glover and out of Miss Oklahoma, and was once even represented as a daughter of Peter McCue.
The most current information available, however, which is recognized by the AQHA, identifies her sire as Gulliver, a son of Missouri Rondo, and her dam as Belle K, a daughter of Dan Tucker.
Franklin Reynolds, a noted Quarter Horse historian who wrote regular features for The Quarter Horse Journal during the 1950s, drove thousands of miles and interviewed scores of friends and neighbors of Tommy Moore (who, by that time, was deceased) in an attempt to pinpoint Cutthroat’s true identity. By his own admission, he was no closer to the truth at the end of his search than he had been at the start.
As discovered by Reynolds, it was Tommy Moore, himself, who was at the heart of the confusion. It was he who, when queried, gave his race mare the various names and pedigrees by which she was known at various times during her life.
There is some evidence that Oklahoma Star was registered with The Jockey Club under a different name. If so, this would be in line with other Quarter Horses of that era who were registered as Thoroughbreds (with erroneous parentage) so as to have more racing opportunities.
Why the contradictory information? In an article on Oklahoma Star in the June 1957 issue of The Quarter Horse Journal, Reynolds probably comes as close to the truth as anyone possibly can.
“Horsemen in those days didn’t so much boast of the races their horses had won, as they expressed a doubt their entry could outrun a certain other horse,” he wrote. “But at the same time they would voice a willingness to try for a little money on the side. They weren’t so likely to brag of the royal blood of their horses, as they were to explain that: “This colt’s daddy was an Indian pony, and his mammy was a mare I got from a trader. I’ve been using this cold in the wagon, and my wife’s been using him as a buggy horse. If there’s any race blood in him, I don’t know it, and I’m inclined to doubt it, but if you’ve got to have a race, we’ll try him and see.”
“It wasn’t always easy to match a horse known to have been high-born.” continued Reynolds. “If a horse was well-bred, that fact, in the Oklahoma of the day, was more likely to remain a secret than to be revealed. It would even be heatedly denied at times.
“If he (Moore) concealed a pedigree truth, or misinformed on a pedigree fact, his intentions were not fundamentally dishonest,” concluded Reynolds. “He was just simply being an Oklahoma horseman of the day and time.”
Whatever her real name and pedigree was, one thing was certain – Cutthroat was a good-looking mare who had more than a little speed.
Arthur Ogden, an associate of Moore’s during the years he lived in the Oklahoma panhandle, knew Cutthroat well and shared some of his recollections of her with Reynolds for Reynolds’ Journal feature. Reynolds quoted Ogden as follows:
If you have ever seen (Maddon’s) Bright Eyes, she was near like Cutthroat. However, Bright Eyes was a bigger mare, and more leggy. Cutthroat was more muscled. Cutthroat never lost but one race. She was matched with a gray mare at Shattuck for a quarter. They scored a long time that afternoon and couldn’t get off. Then we postponed it until the next morning and that night a bunch of fellows who had bet on the gray mare went out and dug up about 20 feet of Cutthroat’s path and filled it with sand. Tommy didn’t ride down the track the next morning to see how it was, and when she hit that sand it almost threw her down, and certainly off stride, and we lost.”
Because of her windpipe injury, Cutthroat was reported to be good for no more than an eighth of a mile. According to Ogden, however, this was simply not the case.
“Cutthroat could run the full quarter any time,” he recalled. “Of course she would be breathing hard at the end, and you could hear her because of her injury, but she could run it. One time, three watches caught her in :22 when she was carrying 165 pounds.”
Name and pedigree deception notwithstanding, the day arrived when Moore could no longer find any competition for Cutthroat.
He decided to breed her in 1914 when she was 6 or 7 years old and his choice of a stallion was a black Thoroughbred by the name of Dennis Reed, who was owned by Ned Snyder of Englewood, Kansas. Dennis Reed was a distance runner, but was credited with being able to run a quarter in :23 flat.
In the spring of 1915, Cutthroat foaled a dark bay colt with a small star on his forehead. Moore promptly named him Oklahoma Star.
Arthur Ogden, who had helped Moore break Cutthroat, also helped with Oklahoma Star.
Reynolds quotes Ogden as saying: “I can recall very clearly when he broke Oklahoma Star, then a 2-year-old. Tommy only rode him about half a mile before he called for a race between Oklahoma Star and Cutthroat. My brother was riding Cutthroat. Oklahoma Star outran her, but she had been nursing foals for 3 years and didn’t have the strength to give him a tough race.”
Moore felt that he had a runner, however, and set out to prove it.
In February 1918, he took Oklahoma Star to Covington, Oklahoma, and matched him against a great runner named Slip Shoulder for an eighth of a mile. Star won with east, but the locals were not convinced.
A second race was set up, this time against a fleet mare named Kate Bernard. The distance was the same and so was the result. In his report of the race which appeared years later in the March 1947 issue of The Quarter Horse, the official publication of the National Quarter Horse Breeders Association, author R.B. Potter related that, as a result of the second race, “all the cowmen of that section concluded immediately (that) Oklahoma Star was a better risk than big steers on cake and grass.”
A year or so later, Moore moved back to Mulhall, taking seven or eight horses with him, including Cutthroat, Oklahoma Star, and three full brothers and sisters to Star.
Moore continued to match-race Oklahoma Star with considerable success. He met and defeated the fastest horses of his day, including Duck Hunter, Big Jaw, Henry Star, Ned S, Jimmy Hicks, Nellie S, and Bear Cat.
As quoted by Franklin Reynolds in the QHJ feature, Harvey Nealis, a well-known jockey at the time in the Guthrie area, recalled the race against Bear Cat.
“I rode Tommy’s horses, because Tommy had gotten too heavy and was too old to do his own riding by that time. We didn’t have any automobiles or trailers in that country then, and if we had to go any distance, we carried the horses in box cars. One day at Mulhall some fellows unloaded a horse they called Bear Cat, and they hunted Tommy up because they knew they could get a race out of him.
“I don’t remember what horse we ran at them, but we got beat like Tommy expected. That was the way Tommy wanted it. Then we matched Oklahoma Star at Bear Cat for a quarter up at Covington. We had found out that Bear Cat could do, and Tommy put up a pretty sizable bunch of money.
“Well sir, I was riding Oklahoma Star and we outran Bear Cat as far as from here to across that street out there. Tommy got well on that race and we weren’t bothered with Bear Cat any more.”
As was the case with his dam, Oklahoma Star soon ran out of horses to run against. Model T Fords were beginning to invade the countryside by that time, however, and Moore began racing his stallion against them. He would match Oklahoma Star for any distance between 20 yards and a quarter of a mile, doing his own riding, oftentimes in a stock saddle.
Then in 1925 or 1926, Moore suffered a severe injury while using a disc harrow that made it necessary for him to sell all of his horses, including Star.
Bill O’Meara, a local farmer, gave Moore $150 for Oklahoma Star and continued to stand him to outside mares for the same fee that Moore had charged – $10.
In 1932, Oklahoma Star changed hands once more and this time it was into the ownership of Ronald Mason, the man who would play a prominent part in Star’s development as one of the foundation sires of the Quarter Horse breed.
Mason owned and operated the Cross J Ranch near Nowata, Oklahoma. At the time of Oklahoma Star’s arrival, Mason had an outstanding set of mares to put him on. Included among them were daughters of Beggar Boy and Quarter Deck, both Thoroughbreds. Beggar Boy was a full brother to the famous Kentucky Derby winner, Black Gold, and Quarter Deck was an own son of the legendary Man O’War.
The remainder of the Mason broodmare band was made up of top Quarter-type mares of Coke Blake and John Dawson breeding. When put on mares of this quality, Oklahoma Star began to excel as a breeding horse.
Bob Denhardt, the dean of Quarter Horse historians, paid a visit to Ronald Mason in the late 1930’s to look over his stock. In an article on Oklahoma Star published in the December 1963 issue of The Quarter Horse Journal, Denhardt shared some of his impressions of the then aged stallion.
“It has been written that Oklahoma Star was 14.2 and weighed 1,200 pounds. I first saw him in the late ’30s and he had a little age on him, but I doubt he had been 14.2 since he was a long yearling. I would judge his normal weight to be under 1,100 pounds.”
“Oklahoma Star was a beautiful mahogany bay with just two white areas on his body – a small star just above the eye line and a left hind foot white through the ankle,” he wrote. “I thought he showed more Thoroughbred blood than his breeding warranted. This was especially noticeable in his ears, head, withers and long bottom line.”
“He showed his Quarter blood in his short pasterns and in the sloping rump and heavily muscled rear legs. His hind legs were as powerful as any I can remember on a horse. This no doubt explains why he was able to leave the starting chute so fast.”
During the time Mason owned him, Oklahoma Star sired such famous sons as Congress Star, Starway, Osage Star, Nowata Star, Star Deck, Oklahoma Star Jr, Double Star, Hillside’s Little Man and Sizzler.
Congress Star, Starway and Osage Star were all full brothers out of Quarter Lady, by Quarter Deck (TB). Congress Star and Starway were both multiple Register of Merit sires, and Osage Star was the sire of Snip Mac, an AQHA Champion. Osage Star was also the sire of Osage Lady Star, the dam of Palleo Pete, the 1954 Champion Quarter Running Stallion.
Nowata Star sired nine ROM race horses, sixteen ROM performance horses, and one AQHA Champion. He was also the sire of Star Duster who, in turn, sired four AQHA Champions and was a leading maternal sire of AQHA Champions. (Star Duster is featured in Legends 1.)
Star Deck sired six AQHA Champions including Paul A, who, in turn, sired eleven AQHA Champions.
Oklahoma Star Jr sired five AQHA Champions and became a leading maternal sire of AQHA Champions. He also sired Pat Star Jr, who, in turn, sired 20 AQHA Champions and became a leading maternal sire of AQHA Champions.
Double Star and Hillside’s Little Man were both multiple ROM sires.
Sizzler, a top son of Oklahoma Star, was an accident. In 1936, Mason took one of his favorite mares, an imported English Thoroughbred named Lad’s Run, to the court of the Thoroughbred stallion Sheridan. The following year she produced a colt who was registered as a Thoroughbred. As a 2-year-old he was put into race training, with distance running as the goal.
Sizzler failed to live up to the potential that Mason thought his breeding warranted. Moreover, he did not look like a Thoroughbred; he looked like a Quarter Horse.
After a discussion with one of the men who had been working for him at the time Lad’s Run was bred, Mason found out the Oklahoma Star had gotten in with Lad’s Run upon her return from being bred to Sheridan, and had serviced her.
Now convinced that Sizzler was a son of Oklahoma Star, Mason cancelled the colt’s Thoroughbred papers and registered him with the fledgling AQHA. He was according to Mason, one of the best looking horses he had ever raised.
While under Ronald Mason’s care and guidance, Oklahoma Star provided to also be an outstanding sire of broodmares. Star’s Lou, for example, produced Miss Meyers (Sired by Leo), the 1953 Champion Quarter Running Horse.
Baldy Girl was the dam of Beggar Girl, one of Walter Merrick’s first great race mares, and she, in turn, produced Leo Bingo, a AAA AQHA Champion.
V’s Peaches produced Little Peach, a leading dam of ROM race horses with 11 to her credit. They included Tinky Poo, a AA AQHA Champion, who sired Hobby Horse, AAA and an AQHA Champion, who, in turn, sired Expensive Hobby, the great reining and working cow horse.
Star Bird C produced War Bird, the dam of four AQHA Champions: War Leo, Ace of Limestone, Limestone Bird, and Rondo Leo. Rondo Leo, in turn, sired Mr Gun Smoke.
Other ROM producing daughters of Oklahoma Star included Betty K, Diamond Jessie, Dona Hunt, Quarter Lady Star, G Fern Red Ribbon, Karen M, Star Babe, and Star Baby B.
And then there were the rope horses.
From the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, Oklahoma Star was the undisputed premier sire of rope horses. During that time, such well-known rodeo performers as Bob Crosby, Buddy May, Ike Rude, Hugh Bennett, Ben Johnson, the Goodspeed brothers, Foreman Faulkner, John Scott, Jim Snively, Everett Bowman, Chalk Dyer, the Burk brothers, Andy Juaregui, and Floyd Gale all roped off Oklahoma Star get or grand-get.
By the time the AQHA was formed in 1940, Oklahoma Star was one of the most influential Quarter sires in existence. He was recognized as such by the organization and, at the age of 27, was assigned the registry number, P-6, distinguishing him as one of the breed’s foundation sires.
Oklahoma Star died on Mason’s ranch on February 14, 1943 at the age of 28, and was buried on a hill overlooking the Cross J Ranch.
Although a part of Oklahoma Star’s heritage will probably forever be unknown, his role in the development of the Quarter Horse breed is secure. He was one of its brightest stars.