If you have been watching the Olympics these past few weeks, you may have caught an equestrian event or two where horses and riders compete at jumping, dressage, and cross-country riding. A century ago, you might have seen horses trotting and jumping at Planting Fields. All six members of the Coe family rode horses for pleasure at Planting Fields and their ranch in Cody, Wyoming, Irma Lake Lodge. At least two of the children, Natalie Mai and Henry, were competitive equestrians who kept horses in the stables of the Hay Barn and exhibited in various horse and pony shows. Natalie, in particular, was taken with the sport, her picture appearing in the papers as “one of the younger society equestriennes.” In the photograph above, Natalie poses confidently astride her horse in her riding clothes, ready to set out from Coe Hall and explore the grounds of Planting Fields. By the age of twelve, the young Miss Coe was an accomplished exhibitor at the horse shows held at the nearby Piping Rock Club and other sporting clubs on Long Island as well as in equestrian competitions in Brooklyn. She competed in events like “high-stepping harness ponies” with her prizewinning horses Twilight and Brown Sugar. In April 1922, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle proudly reported that the region’s “prestige” in horsemanship “was regained in the class for ponies under saddle, in which the first three places went to Borough and Long Island exhibitors.” Natalie and Brown Sugar, a brown gelding, took the blue ribbon in that event.
Meredith A. Brown, Director of Museum Affairs and Chief Curator, and Caitlin Colban-Waldron, Michael D. Coe Archivist
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1 Photo caption, Pittsburg Press, October 12, 1921.
1 Newspaper clipping from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 20, 1922.