Ray Carter hunting the New Market-Middletown Valley hounds in 1981 / Janet Hitchen photoRaymond Allaeys Carter died peacefully at home in Middletown, Maryland on June 20, 2011 from complications related to prostate cancer. Ray was born in Yorkshire, England in 1930. Times were tough in those years and money was scarce. Ray, however, with a natural love of horses always found a way to beg rides on farmer’s draft horses returning from work in the fields.

He cleaned stalls at a local stable to be able to ride. He was a natural athlete and was soon riding some of the fancier ponies in local gymkhanas. When he finished school at age fourteen, his parents, loath to let him work in the local mines, arranged an apprenticeship for him with a racing stable in Newmarket. He was basically an indentured servant, receiving only a pound a month for learning a trade. At the end of five years he was earning twenty pounds a year.