Father was born at 20/22 London Street, Basingstoke, on 25th August 1868, into a very musical family. His father, a piano professor, ran a successful music shop. Father was the sixth and youngest child to reach adulthood - a younger sister having died in infancy. His brother, Harry, inherited the musical talent and followed in his father's footsteps. Another brother, Arthur, went into the Navy and subsequently became a great naval tailor in the City of London.

Gerald George Powell

It would appear that Father's one interest from an early age was in horses, so that when he left school his father got in touch with Mr Bristow of Eastrop Farm, Basingstoke, who took him on as an apprentice groom. Mr Bristow, as well as farming, ran a hunting stable, presumably hiring out hunters.

In due course, my Father accompanied Mr Bristow to Ireland, where there was a thriving export market for Irish bred hunters. The French, I believe mostly from the North of France, also came to buy hunters in Ireland. In this way my Father got to know a M. Bogaert, who ran a hunting stable in Lille. Presumably having assessed my father's capabilities, M. Bogaert offered him a position at his own hunting stables. This would be around 1890 or 1891 and this is how Father came to live in France. He eventually met and married a French woman, Celine Saene, and in 1897 they had a daughter, Denise. Celine died around the turn of the century.

During this period it seems that in his free time, or combined with his work at the hunting stable, Father went over the frontier into the Belgian Ardennes, to act as an interpreter to Americans and Canadians who, at that time, were coming over to purchase the Ardennais draft horse for use in their developing agricultural industry. This was how he met Mr Herbert Truman, a Veterinary Surgeon from March, Cambridgeshire, who was buying on behalf of his father and three brothers, who had left their native Fenland farming for the United States.

Ardennes horses at a stud in Belgium

Mr Truman was also buying French draft horses, the Percherons: the breed was being developed to meet a huge demand from the USA and Canada. It was at Mr Truman's suggestion, and with his encouragement, that Father went into the Perche district of France (south of Normandy) where he found that demand was also growing for people who could speak French and English and who could help the Americans and Canadians locate the stallions and mares they needed.

I am not sure when Father gave up working for M. Bogaert but I rather think it was while Celine, his first wife, was still alive and he was helping run a family business while still dealing with hunting horses and the Ardennais draft horse. Again, I am not sure, but I think that when he married Mother (Blanche Moody from Basingstoke) in 1904, he was spending most of his time in the Ardennes, occasionally going down to the Perche region. By this time he was also getting to know people and he would get requests for other breeds, such as the white Dutch carriage horse.

Continues........

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