Known as "the first lady of Quarter Horse racing," Harriett Peckham owned, stood and raced champion Quarter Horses for decades.
As a girl growing up in Houston, Peckham and her brother boarded riding horses near the old Arrowhead Park, where the two siblings became interested in Quarter Horse racing.
In 1950, Harriett married William Peckham, a Houston businessman also interested in horses. The couple, along with Peckham’s brother, Snider Carlton, started acquiring blue-blooded racehorses.
In partnership with Frank Vessels, Sr., founder of Los Alamitos Race Course, the Peckhams purchased three-time world champion Go Man Go. The couple also bought Rocket Bar (TB) after their stallion, Brazos Bar, died. Other stallions owned by the Peckhams were Easy Jet, Real Easy Jet, Rocket Wrangler, St Bar and Sparkling Native (TB).
By 1972, Peckham was divorced, and owned the 350-acre Buena Suerte Ranch, Spanish for “good luck.” The Roswell, New Mexico ranch housed stallions, broodmares and racehorses.
Peckham’s success as a breeder stemmed from her emphasis on mares. The broodmares were treated as well as the stallions and racehorses.
“If nothing else,” Peckham once said, “the Buena Suerte Ranch made everyone get on the stick and start taking care of mares.”
Among the mares owned by Peckham were Decketta, Miss Jelly Roll, Miss Assured and Miss Olene. The produce of these mares was Streakin Six, Pie In The Sky and Little Blue Sheep.
Three of the stallions, Easy Jet, Rocket Bar and Go Man Go, preceded Peckham’s induction into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame.
Peckham was an AQHA life member, a member of the AQHA Racing Committee and a gold patron of the American Quarter Horse Foundation.
Peckham died in April 1995 at 64. She was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2006.
Biography updated as of March 2006.