Snowden Carter Dies at Age 83

Snowden Carter, who served as general manager of the Maryland Horse Breeders' Association and editor of The Maryland Horse from 1962 until his retirement in 1986, died Feb. 3 of heart failure at his home in Owings Mills, Md. He was 83.

His daughter, Lucy Acton, is the current editor of Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred magazine, which replaced The Maryland Horse several years ago.

Wilton Snowden Carter was a native of Baltimore's Pimlico neighborhood. A graduate of Duke University, he was a horse enthusiast and owner who had a small breeding farm in the 1950s and '60s. He began his journalism career as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun in 1944 and switched to coving racing two years later. He also wrote the Maryland breeding column for Daily Racing Form in the 1980s and '90s.

He was a former president of the Maryland Racing Writers' Association and served for many years as the organization's secretary. He won the Thoroughbred Racing Associations' award for best newspaper story in 1956 (now the Eclipse Award) for reporting about Needles and Fabius in the Preakness. He served as a judge for the Eclipse Awards for writing five times.

Carter also won the National Steeplechase Association award for best magazine story about steeplechase racing in 1967 and 1970. He was president of American Horse Publications in 1973 and 1974.

"He took the (Maryland Horse) magazine from a little newsletter and made it the National Geographic of the horse business," Mike Pons, president of the Maryland Million and co-owner of Country Life Farm in Bel Air, Md., told the Sun.

"Snowden was not only a great editor, but he looked like one, too, with his patrician, literary demeanor and shock of white hair," Ross Peddicord, co-publisher of Maryland Life Magazine, told the paper. "There was a bit of a flair to him, like he had stepped from the pages of the old New Yorker magazine into horsey Maryland."

While general manger of the state breeding association, Carter began the state-bred program.

"It was the first program in the county--and it became a model--that paid incentives for breeding horses in-state," his daughter said. "He championed that."

Along with his daughter, Carter is survived by his wife, Margaret Lickle Cromwell; two sons, Bruce and George Carter; and 10 grandchildren. His first wife, Araminta Rullman, died in 1995.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 14 at St. Stephens Traditional Episcopal Church. Memorial contributions may be sent to St. Stephens Traditional Episcopal Church, 11856 Mays Chapel Rd., Timonium, Md., 21093.