American Cream

The American Cream is a draft horse that started in Iowa in the early 1900s and has been rare its whole existence. It traces to one mare. Old Granny was a cream-colored draft mare of unknown breeding, sold at a farm sale in Story County, Iowa, in 1911. She was foaled somewhere between 1890 and 1905, and she threw cream foals reliably enough that Iowa breeders started paying attention.

Interest turned serious when her great-great-grandson Silver Lace arrived in 1932, a stallion standing 16 hands and weighing 2,200 pounds. Cream drafts became a fixture in the counties around Melbourne, Iowa.

One man did most of the work of turning a color into a breed. Clarence Rierson bought every mare by Silver Lace he could find, traced each horse's ancestry and wrote the pedigrees down. He helped charter the American Cream Draft Horse Association in 1944 with 20 members and 75 foundation horses, and he gave the breed its name. They got their own class at the Webster City fair that same year, in the county where they began.

Expect a light draft horse: calm, willing, cream-bodied with amber eyes.