Nina McKee and daughter Lily McKee at the Warrenton Hunt Junior Meet in December, 2017. Lily is the great-great-granddaughter of William Almy. / Douglas Lees photo
Ninety-nine years ago, William Almy, twenty-two, was Master of the Quansett Hounds in South Westport, Massachusetts. Almy and his hounds hunted the fox from Quansett Farm, in the possession of the Almy family since 1700. The farm was situated on the northern shore of Buzzards Bay where the bay meets Rhode Island Sound. At the time of his death in 1979, he’d been a member of the Masters of Foxhounds Association for nearly fifty-six years.
In his time, Almy was recognized as the leading amateur huntsman in North America. He hunted English, American, and Crossbred hounds through his career as Master and huntsman of Quansett and Groton Hunts in Massachusetts, and Culpeper and Warrenton Hunts in Virginia. Almy was constantly in demand as a judge at horse shows and hound shows.
Almy believed that hounds must be bred for the country in which they hunt, and he continued that practice wherever he went. He took his Quansett pack of Welsh-American Crossbreds to Virginia, adding a draft of English hounds brought over by his Culpeper Joint-Master, but gradually changed over to a mostly American pack, finding that breed best-suited for sport in the Virginia country.
He returned to Quansett in 1934, and crossed his Welsh-Fell bloodlines with American Walker, Trigg, and Virginia strains, producing a pack that showed superb sport for another twenty years.
When in 1926 the MFHA (located in Boston) incorporated, Almy was one of the seven incorporators. He was elected a member of the Executive Committee in 1940, secretary of the Association in 1949, and served as president of the MFHA from 1960 to 1970.
During Almy’s term as president, a youthful group of upstarts, led by the late MFHs Sherman Haight, Alexander Mackay-Smith, and others, petitioned to limit the terms of MFHA leadership with the purpose of stimulating the association to be more responsive to the needs of the members. The MFHA’s biggest shakeup resulted in the current practice of fixed three-year terms for officers.
William Almy is a 1999 inductee into the Huntsmen’s Room at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting in Leesburg, Virginia.
Posted February 26, 2018
