Our goal with this section of the website is to summarize the content of the American Connemara Pony Society News in the 1970s.

This letter-size newsletter, the official publication of the ACPS, consisted of eight to 10 pages, mostly text, with black and white photos. The cover had a green folio that included the ACPS logo.

Our summaries will cover the bigger moments in the society’s history or certain members’ extraordinary achievements that received coverage in the newsletter, rather than regional Connemara show results that were included in many issues.

Horse deaths of foundation Connemaras appeared in some of these issues, with a list of offspring.

There are also random photos of horses.

There is a surprising amount of snark in these pages—more than a few examples of the editor publicly chiding horse show managers for not sending summaries of events or exhibitors for not sending photos. Being editor of a publication is very frustrating, but the snark is usually muttered under one’s breath, not published.

For those of you who like to hearken back to the days when the ACPS was one big happy family, that is not what we’re seeing. We don’t think those days existed.

Also, there is a running theme in these newsletters of people not registering their Connemaras permanently or not following procedures.

We’ll get to some of that as we work our way through the newsletters.

The Society’s Earliest Newsletter

Stud Book IV of the American Connemara Pony Society, published in 1968, mentioned that the society had started to publish a newsletter, thus ending the ACPS secretary trying to summarize a year’s worth of news (or three years’ worth of news) in the front of the stud books, as was done from 1959-1968.

Our family got involved in Connemaras in 1972.

The earliest ACPS newsletter in our collection is from 1973, and it is labeled Vol. 3. It appears that the newsletter in this form started in 1971 and had four issues per year. We can’t say what was published in the prior few years.

Our issues of this newsletter are sporadic. We weren’t subscribers for the two 1973 issues we have (there’s no address in the address area on the back). We have no issues from 1974. We have one from August 1975 with Lynfields Farm’s address on the back, so we assume the Baileys gave it to us when we were visiting their farm that summer.

We can report on the issues we have.

With all that in mind, if you’re still interested, read on.