Leon Oliver - There's a lot of Walk in his Pedigree

By Sarah Gee
©Voice, February 2007

Leon Oliver is proud of his family’s history.

Leon Oliver was born into the Tennessee Walking Horse business. His family’s involvement in the breed extends all the way back to 1921 when a sorrel stud colt dubbed Red Allen entered the world. Red Allen was owned by Leon’s maternal grandfather R.H. Clark, a Marshall County, Tennessee, horseman that worked with both horses and mules. In 1926, Mr. Clark began standing Red Allen at stud for a fee of $10 to be paid after the birth of a live foal. He also used the horse under saddle until he fell and injured a hip. Following the formation of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ Association in 1935, Red Allen was registered as Clark’s Red Allen (370021) and continued to stand at R.H. Clark’s farm until Mr. Clark’s death in 1939. At that point Leon Oliver’s parents, Sara Mae Clark Oliver and Herman Oliver, inherited the now eighteen-year-old stallion. A skilled horseman himself, Herman Oliver continued to stand Clark’s Red Allen at public stud.

The late 1930s and early 1940s were times of change in the Tennessee Walking Horse industry. The advent of the Celebration shifted breeders’ focus from the all-around utility horse to the show horse and, as a result, different bloodlines came into favor. Clark’s Red Allen was thought to represent the finest Roan Allen line breeding of the day and thus garnered much attention. At one point, Frank Rambo, owner of World Grand Champions Melody Maid and City Girl approached the Olivers about purchasing the stallion. Although the offer was quite lucrative, they declined the bid.

Born in 1940, Leon remembers the pall that fell over the family farm when Clark’s Red Allen passed away in 1946. While Herman Oliver did not keep a son of the old sorrel stallion, he did offer the services of two other well-bred stallions through the end of the 1940s.

The beginning of the 1950s saw great changes in rural America. As factories converted to domestic production, the tractor became affordable for even the smallest farmer. The market for the utility horse declined. In Middle Tennessee, this decline was accelerated by a drought that badly affected the usually lush hay crop. Herman Oliver, like most of his brethren, sold his stallions to concentrate on farm activities that would generate greater profit.

The Olivers did, however, maintain a spotted saddle pony breeding operation. They stood a tobiano pony named Billy Boy that would go on to figure prominently in the foundation bloodlines of the Spotted Saddle Horse. It was Billy Boy and the spotted saddle ponies that provided Leon’s introduction to working with horses. Leon still retains his father’s detailed records on the court of Billy Boy as well as a number of Billy Boy’s descendants.

Although the Olivers no longer had a walking stallion, Sara Oliver’s brother, Jesse Clark, kept a son of Clark’s Red Allen out of a daughter of Hunter’s Allen F-10. That horse was named Red Bud Allen. A popular stallion that serviced up to 90 mares a season, Red Bud Allen was primarily known as a pleasure sire and many of his foals, which were known to be comfortable, sensible saddle horses, were from grade mares. More than anything, Red Bud Allen was a family horse.

As the pony market softened in the early 1960s, Leon decided to breed his mare, Merry Man’s Starr, to his uncle’s stallion. The result was a filly. When Leon entered the U.S. Army in 1963, one of his younger brothers claimed the filly and eventually sold her. Upon his return from the Army, Leon bred his mare to Red Bud Allen two more times. The first colt died but the second, Red Bud’s Rascal, survived. Leon relates, “I’ve just always liked to have animals that I can trace back to those my daddy and granddaddy had. My horses trace back, my ponies trace back, and my jacks and jennets trace back.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, Middle Tennessee offered few opportunities for a young flat shod stallion to prove himself. The Saturday night breed shows were for padded walked horses and the smaller saddle club shows centered more around spotted and racking competition. Red Bud’s Rascal was not built up and he didn’t rack.

So, for most of his life, Red Bud’s Rascal was basically a family horse. Unadvertised and promoted solely by word-of-mouth, he attracted primarily mare owners interested in producing good utility horses. Leon explains, “When someone would want to breed to Bud, I’d saddle him up and ride him over to their place.”

By the late 1970s trends were changing as plantation classes became more common at Saturday night shows and trail riding was enjoying a resurgence in popularity. These developments meant that stallions like Red Bud’s Rascal, stallions that could produce naturally smooth gaited horses, were in greater demand. Breeders seeking to produce plantation competitors searched out the old bloodlines that had been prominent 40 years before. Capitalizing on these trends, in 1979, Leon ordered a set of business cards offering Red Bud’s Rascal, “a grandson of Clark’s Red Allen, born in 1921,” as a pleasure sire.

In addition to standing Bud and breeding his own mares to the stallion, Leon did his own research and sent his mares to the courts of other Middle Tennessee pleasure stallions. The daughters of Bud have been particularly successful as broodmares. One daughter, Red Bud Lady, was bred to Senator’s Sterling to produce Leon’s current stallion and saddle mount Buds Sterling Bullet. Experienced on the trails, Bullet is equally comfortable on parade duty. He and Leon’s gray jack, Old River, teamed to pull a wagon in the Columbia, Tennessee, Mule Day Parade for several years. Leon relates, “I raised the two together. Bullet and Old River were born about three or four days apart and they came up together. 1996 was the last year we drove them together in the parade, that’s the year Old River died.”

Buds Sterling Bullet is a member of the Oliver family.

Foaled in 1988, Buds Sterling Bullet displays and passes on the same characteristics that have been prized by the Clark and Oliver families for over 85 years – intelligence and tractability, a smooth natural running walk, solid bone structure, and proud carriage. His foals are in demand all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. And, since the passing of Red Bud’s Rascal in 1997, he has become the standard bearer for the foundation Red Allen bloodline. Leon states, “I don’t have any trouble getting mares to breed to Bullet, especially those of bird hunters and trail riders.”

Currently, in addition to Bullet, Leon and Mary Lou Oliver’s Brown Shop Road Farm is home to a band of good producing broodmares, of which four are daughters of Red Bud’s Rascal, a small herd of spotted saddle ponies descended from Billy Boy, and several jennets and a jack that trace back to the stock of R.H. Clark and Herman Oliver. Clearly Leon Oliver has devoted his life to preserving his family’s agricultural heritage. It is truly fortunate for us that, in the process, he has also preserved the heritage of our great breed.