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Elk River Farm
Danny & Sherry Taylor, Winchester, Tennessee
WELCOME!
Jab Faulkner of the Boonville community of Lincoln County was a Middle Tennessee Walking Horse breeder of the old school. His father and uncles had raised good mares from brood stock that they had owned for years and the many fine stallions that stood in their section of the state. Jab continued to raise foals from the lines promoted by his father and uncle, and long after the advent of the padded show Walking Horse, the Faulkner farm was noted for its fine using horses.
Jab and his wife, Frances had no children, however, and as they grew older with no younger family members interested in carrying on what they had developed, they decided to offer their broodmares for sale. One of the people who gladly acquired one of the Faulkner's finest mares was Danny Taylor of Elk River Farms near Lynchburg, Tennessee.
Danny Taylor grew up with Walking Horses and after attending college and working in a city for some years, he decided to return to his roots in Franklin County with the idea of raising foundation-bred Walkers as his Dad had done.
The mare that Danny purchased from Jab Faulkner was a black sabino named Lucy Sue's Angel. A tall, well built mare, she had inherited the Go Boy beauty from her sire, Angel's Go Boy, while taking her size from her dam, a daughter of Sage Fire.

Lucy Sue's Angel
Since Danny did not own a stallion at the time he purchased Lucy Sue's Angel, he was intent on finding stallions of older bloodlines with undisputed pedigrees, good dispositions, and the old fashioned walk. One day he, his brother and veteran horseman, Leon Oliver, went to Cannon County to look at a pair of stallions being offered at public stud by their breeder, Horton Elrod. One was a black-bay son of Merry Go Boy. The second and older stallion was a true black son of Midnight Sun named Sun's Midnight Mark. Danny was excited to have found a son of the Sun still available in middle Tennessee. He took his new black sabino mare to the court of the old black stallion in the spring of 1992. The following year, Lucy Sue's Angel foaled a black stud colt. Not the coal black of its sire, this colt sported a bald face and four stocking legs. When the foal coat shed off, the colt shimmered a dusty dark blue with a contrast of the white stockings and a very black mane and tail. Danny named his grandson of Midnight Sun, Sun's Smokey Midnight.
Sun's Smokey Midnight was an attractive younster with a gentle attitude and a true running walk that he readily demonstrated at liberty. He had size, gait, color, and a foundation pedigree that is unique within the area. Danny determined that this young stallion would have a chance to prove himself at stud. With that goal in mind, he made sure that Smokey was started as a sane and safe trail horse, that the young blue stallion showed the gait under saddle, as well as other traits required of trail mounts.
The first foals sired by Sun's Smokey Midnight arrived in the spring of 1997. Breeders in the area quickly realized that here was a stallion offering something quite different from the currently popular Pride and Pusher lines. Smokey offspring in general inherited their sire's very correct gait, his size and weight-carrying bone, his willing disposition, and often his flashy sabino pattern.
As the years of the 90's passed, mares visited his court not only from surrounding counties, but some from over a hundred miles away. Breeders were pleased with their foals, returned to raise more of them. As the first Smokey foals grew and were started under saddle, they proved to be what their breeders and owners wanted in terms of dependable, easy-gaited trail mounts
Sun's Smokey Midnight celebrated his tenth birthday in 2003. He stands as one of the few grandsons of Midnight Sun available at public stud that does NOT trace back to Sun through H.F. Pride of Midnight.
Danny Taylor is particularly fond of the Smokey-sired offspring that are out of the daughters of his family's late Pagie's Echo stallion. Danny's future plans for Smokey include repeated crosses with Paige's Echo daughters, as well as mares by Bud's Sterling Bullet. He believes these crosses will produce "an awfully good riding horse". Danny hopes the Smokey image will color his pastures for years to come.
Growing up in Middle Tennessee in the 50's with the wide open countryside to ramble over was a great experience for boys. The Taylor boys, Billy and Danny, felt something was missing. That something was a horse! The brothers suggested, offered, wheeled and begged and their persistence finally wore down their father, Dan Taylor's resistance. Billy and Danny became the proud owners of not one horse, but two!
The Taylor brothers acquired a vividly marked sabino mare named Lulu Taylor and her filly, Pinky Lu. Lulu Taylor was sired by a grandson of Brown Allen and she was out of a daugther by Wadie Boy, a sabino son of Brantley's Roan Allen, Jr.

Billy & Danny Taylor as kids with Pinkey Lu and Lu Lu Taylor
Lulu passed to her daughter, Pinky, the bright color inherited from her dam, perhaps assisted a little by the filly's sire, Wilson's Merry Boy G.G. This flaxen roan Merry Boy son was out of Wilson's Allen's Mello Gold, a full sister to the famous trio of breeding stallions Hill's Wilson's Allen, Miller's Wilson's Allen, and Wartrace.
As had other families before them, the Taylors found that Billy's and Danny's equine enthusiasm was contagious. Spurred by his sons' interest, Dan Taylor began to raise foals from the family mares. He started by crossing them with the 1943 World Champion Three Year Old Stallion, Society Man. Since the Taylors did not own a trailer, they rode the mares to the stallion who was several miles away. The sale in the late 50's of a Society Man foal that became a show ring success convinced Dan Taylor that a breeding program was a wise addition to the farm's activities. When Society Man left for California in 1960, the Taylor mares went to the courts of his son, Paige's Black Boy and to Sir Winston S., a popular Go Boy's Shadow stallion standing in nearby Moore County. If the mares weren't busy in the nursery, Billy and Danny enjoyed them on trail rides and riding around the farm.
As a shift in trends in the late 60's led to a depressed colt market, Dan Taylor decided to curtail the breeding operation. He sold Lulu Taylor and Pinky Lu but did keep two daughters out of Lulu Taylor sired by Sir Winston and a Setting Sun horse named Duke of Dearmanville. At this point, Billy and Danny were grown and working away from home in Memphis, with no way to incorporate horses into their busy lives.
The daughters of Lulu Taylor foaled two fillies in the spring of 1979. Danny sold his as a two year old but Billy broke his filly to ride and designated her as the foundation mare of his breeding program.
Determined to promote and preserve older, rare bloodlines, Billy took his sorrel mare Red Bud's Ladybug, to Cornersville, Tennessee to a mahogany bay stallion named Mark's Crackerjack, owned by Leon Oliver's brother Steve. The results were two bay fillies named Taylor's Merry Girl and Taylor's June Girl. With their dam, these two formed the nucleus of Billy's broodmare band.
In the late 80's Danny Taylor decided to rejoin his brother in the pleasure walking horse business. To obtain breeding stock with the old lines he favored, Danny went to the farm of Billy Ray Sanders for two Last Chance bred mares, to Jab Faulkner who once stood Top Wilson, for an Angel's Go Boy mare and to Dr. Nesbitt for a Sir Maugray bred mare. These mares went to the courts of Chance's Goldust H., Red Bud's Rascal, Sun's Midnight Mark, and Go Boy's Cannonball. Danny kept the promising fillies he produced to develop a group of naturally gaited, foundation-bred mares.
With two large broodmare bands representing a variety of older bloodlines, Billy and Danny began to retain stallions on their farms. Always searching for stallions representing different foundation lines, they were surprised to discover in the Brownington community of Franklin County, an old stallion bred by their father. J.W. Sanders had kept this big, dark sorrel sabino since 1967. Sanders was not a horse person, he just liked the big horse and regarded him as a pet. Paiges's Echo, sired by Paige's Black Boy and out of Pinky Lu, had never been gelded, but he had never served a registered walking mare. Mr. Sanders' health was failing, making it difficult to continue to care for the horse. When the opportunity arose, the Taylor Brothers returned Paige's Echo to the farm where he'd been foaled 27 years before.
In 1993, the first registered Tennessee Walking Horse sired by Paige's Echo hit the ground. Subsequent foal crops revealed the results of the Taylor's planning and care. The foals by Echo were attractive youngsters with plenty of natural walk and people-oriented dispositions. They were also smart and eager to please. As an added bonus, many went beyond their sire's minimally expressed sabino to sport loud roan patterns with high stockings, bald faces, and eye-arresting body spots.
Danny Taylor has seen the pendulum swing widely in the Walking Horse world that he has known since a youngster. The Walker that could perform a natural nodding walk, the horse with the calm disposition and people-loving attitude became a no-man's horse as the padded show ring performer in shades of black, bay, and dark chestnut became the idol of the Saturday night show. Now, as more and more people have begun to appreciate, and even expect to find a Walker with the natural lick, the Taylors find that the family heritage they made an effort to preserve contains within it the genetic potential to consistently reproduce the horse to fulfill those expectations.
Below are photos of our broodstock. Keep checking back as the photos will be added to, and/or changed, spring 2008.
Contact Info:
Danny Taylor
11945 Lynchburg Rd
Winchester, TN 39398
Phone: (931) 967-9553

Danny Taylor with Echo's Merry Co-Ed, by Paige's Echo, out of Lucy Sue's Angel. One of the few living Sun-less Heritage Walking Horses in the breed

Left: Paige's Echo pictured at 29 years old. Echo was the sire of many of the Taylor Brothers' present broodstock.
Right: Paige's Black Boy #590115, sire of Paige's Echo, was the son of Society Man #400554. Several of the broodmares at Elk River farm come from this bloodline.

Left, Starla Gray Wilson #20105958, one of the mares in Danny's herd shown here at one year of age.
Right: Generator's Jen, one of Danny's Heritage Outcross mares. Jen's sire is Generator's Vantage Point, her dam was a daughter of Bud's Sterling Bullet, Sterling's Dolly.

Generator's Sweet Pearl #20009519. This mare is another of Danny's Heritage Outcross mares. She was sired by Generator's Vantage Point and is out of Echo's Merry Lu.

No Fear Merry, A filly bred by Danny Taylor, shown as a yearling. She had visitors from Belgium (Sandra and Oscar) as well as visitors from Wisconsin the day this photo was taken. She now resides in Wisconsin with Joan Hendricks.

Meet Society's Echo, a 2005 colt by Society's Dan Allen, out of Echo's Merry Co-Ed. This colt now resides in Indiana with Will Kirk Jr.
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