My theory is that some of our very first yellow horses were champagnes. In fact and I can hear the pshaws of disbelief already I believe old Golden Lady #350031, foaled in 1913, and her three golden foals (Golden Sunshine F-44, Golden Girl #350019, and Yellow Jacket #360141) as well as many of her grand-get, including Barker's Moonbeam #380497, were actually champagnes.

Golden Lady was owned throughout her breeding career by Burt Hunter of Lewisburg, Tennessee. Burt's daughter, Jean Hunter, remembers well her family's golden horses and described Golden Sunshine F-44 to me in vivid detail. "He was the most unusual color you've ever seen," she says. "You could put a gold dollar up against him and stand back in the sun, and you couldn't see the dollar. And he had white skin and yellow eyes. His mother, Golden Lady, was the same way." Golden Girl and Yellow Jacket had the same pale skin and eyes, Jean added.

So, what about Golden Sunshine's most famous son, Barker's Moonbeam, who in 1948 was called "the foundation sire of the Palomino Walking Horse" by Dr. H. Arthur Zappe, secretary of the Palomino Horse Breeders of America?
Well, McAllen Finley of Readyville, Tennessee, says, "I can remember my grandfather saying that Barker's Moonbeam was sort of a dun color, yellow with a brownish mane and tail. And he had pink skin. He was not a palomino." Finley's grandfather was none other than Vance Paschal, noted palomino breeder and the nephew of C. O. Barker, who owned Barker's Moonbeam.

Ray Barker, C. O.'s son, confirms the yellow-with-brown-points description, "to the best of [his] memory." Even more telling, Barker's Moonbeam was registered simply as "yellow horse." Period. No "white mane and tail," as most palominos were registered back then.

Certainly, there are many famous yellow sons of Barker's Moonbeam who were dark-skinned palominos, including our breed's most famous palomino, Allen's Gold Zephyr #431975, a.k.a. Roy Rogers' Trigger, Jr. But, there are at least two ways this could have happened.

First, breeding gold to gold was a common practice in the 1930s and 1940s, and some of the dark-skinned sons and daughters of Barker's Moonbeam most likely had dark-skinned palomino or buckskin dams. It could also be that Barker's Moonbeam was an amber champagne with an added cremello gene (the color of his dam is unknown she may have been a palomino or buckskin, for all we know). If he did carry two different dilution genes, Barker's Moonbeam could have produced both pink-skinned champagnes and dark-skinned palominos/buckskins (which would help explain his extremely high color-production percentage).

Unfortunately, good-quality photographs from the 1930s and 1940s are very difficult to find. Almost none show faces in enough detail to determine skin color (and I've yet to find an under-the-tail shot!).

However, there's no doubt in my mind that many of our industry's first yellow horses were pink-skinned champagnes. Too many of our champagnes today trace directly to Golden Lady for the case to be otherwise.