Oliver Henry Wallop, 8th Earl of Portsmouth (13 January 1861 – 10 February 1943), was a British peer and also served in the Wyoming State Legislature in the United States.[1]
Quick Facts The Right HonourableThe Earl of PortsmouthDL, Member of the Wyoming House of Representatives ...
From 1917 to 1919, he served in the British Army in the First World War.[3]
Wyoming
In 1884, at the age of twenty-eight, Wallop migrated to the United States. With his remittance, he capitalized a horse ranch near Miles City, Montana. Two English-bred stallions, a gift from his father, helped him begin his horse-breeding operation. In 1890, Wallop bought a homestead near Big Horn, Wyoming. There, he began to raise and to train polo ponies and tandem horse teams. He trailed them to the railroad for shipment to the East Coast and to England. Five years later, he bought another ranch at the mouth of Little Goose Creek, named it the Canyon Ranch, and moved his operation there.[4]
In 1899, he partnered with his neighbors, fellow British expatriates William and Malcolm Moncreiffe, in an expanded horse business. At the time, a horse in Wyoming might sell for between five and thirty-nine dollars. Wallop and his partners bought horses at relatively inexpensive prices, trained them, and sold them to the British cavalry for as much as ninety-seven dollars. During the three years of the Second Boer War in what is now South Africa, the operation shipped more than twenty thousand horses. During World War I, Wallop and his partners supplied horses to the British, French, and Italian armies. Wallop himself took the role of horse buyer in Oregon and Washington state. In peacetime, Wallop continued to breed and train polo ponies.[4]
England
Wallop's elder brothers, the 6th and 7th earls, both died without male heirs. In 1925, he succeeded as the 8th Earl.[5][6] Wallop was allowed to take his seat in the House of Lords after first renouncing his American citizenship.[7]
Wallop married Marguerite Walker, daughter of Samuel Johnson Walker of Kentucky and Amanda née Morehead (daughter of Governor Charles S. Morehead), and had two sons, Gerard Vernon Wallop and Oliver Malcolm Wallop.[1]