J.M. Frost III

J.M. Frost III owned, bred, trained, showed and raced American Quarter Horses for decades and was active in AQHA from the early 1940s until his death in 2013.

“From a purely historical perspective, J.M. Frost III was almost singularly responsible for catapulting the King family of horses into the national limelight as AQHA show horses,” noted stock horse historian and author Frank Holmes. “His entry into the show-horse business and subsequent growth in that field paralleled that of the Quarter Horse breed. Of the first four AQHA Champion daughters of King (P-234), Mr. Frost owned, trained and campaigned three. At one time, he owned more daughters of King than anyone outside the Hankins family.”

Born August 21, 1914, Jay Miles Frost III was a fourth-generation Texan. Earning a bachelor’s degree from Rice University in 1936 and both undergraduate and master’s degrees in geology from the University of Texas in 1938, he was raised on his family’s Frost Ranch at Sugar Land,  where he became involved in oil and gas, rice farming, cattle ranching and every facet of the horse industry. Frost and wife Mickey had one son, Ford Jay Frost, who with wife Claudia have daughter Ann Chiles Frost, who avidly breeds, trains and shows European warmblood hunters and jumpers.

With horses, Frost  ran the gamut, from riding his pony to school as a little boy, enjoying jumping as a young man, working cattle on the ranch as a cowboy and moving on to competitive events as a breeder, owner and trainer.

Frost bred 641 American Quarter Horses, with 259 performing in AQHA competitions. In the show ring, those included 28 AQHA Champions, 16 horses that earned a total of 27 Superior Performance and eight Superior Halter awards, and 66 ROMs. Altogether, Frost bred the earners of 6,502 points in all divisions.

Frost bred 107 Quarter Horses that started official races, with 46 coming back winners and four of those in stakes, including Go Setty Go, who in 1971 scored in the Quarter Horse Racing Congress Handicap at Ruidoso Downs.

Frost was influential in setting up the National Cutting Horse Association and is a member of the NCHA Hall of Fame.
 

He became an AQHA director in 1962 and served until 1985, when he became one of the first directors emeriti. At the 2013 AQHA Convention, he was recognized as the senior member of the AQHA board.

From early on, Frost trained many of his own horses, including Red Bud L and Little Alice L, who in 1955 became the first two full sisters to qualify as AQHA Champions.

“In those days, not very many horsemen knew who I was by name,” said Frost, as quoted by Frank Holmes in his book “King P-234: Cornerstone of an Industry.” Frank died in January 2013, six months before J.M.’s passing in June that year.

J.M. Frost III was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2019.

Biography updated as of March 2019.