Pam Coburn Collection

Summary: A collection documenting the saving and gift of the casting made from the original horse sculpture for the horse fountain on the Tarrant County Courthouse lawn. On the restored Horse Fountain it is engraved "Marguerite Coburn - who saved the horse" - Marguerite Coburn is the mother of the Archives donor. Marguerite was born in Collin County in 1912, but moved to Fort Worth as a young child, where horses quickly became her life-long passion. In 1944, she and her husband, Otha, started the Coburn Catering Company. In the 1960s, Mrs. Coburn found the statue of the old horse from the original horse trough in a Fort Worth store. She borrowed the piece and took it to a foundry and commissioned four aluminum replicas. During Fort Worth's Sesquicentennial celebration in 1999, her dream of restoring the courthouse fountain was realized and one of the golden horses was placed atop the structure. Marguerite Coburn was an active horsewoman throughout her life and raised palominos for show and sale. In the early 1970s she introduced the breed in Brazil by shipping some of her horses there.