Born in Vernon in the Vermont Republic, Hunt graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1807.[1] Afterwards, Hunt studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1812. Hunt commenced practice in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1812.[2] He was the first president of the Old Brattleboro Bank in 1821, the first bank established in Brattleboro, a position he held for years afterward.[3] He also carried the rank of General in the Vermont militia, as had his uncle Arad Hunt.[4]
Hunt was a lifelong friend of statesman and orator Daniel Webster.[7] The brick home that Hunt had built in Brattleboro, later known as the Colonel Hooker home,[8] was the first brick home built in town.[9]
Death
Hunt died in Washington, D.C., on May 15, 1832, while still in office.[10] At his death he left an estate valued in excess of $150,000. He was buried in the family plot in the Old Cemetery on the Hill in Brattleboro, Vermont.[11]
Family life
A graduate of Dartmouth, Hunt served as a trustee of Vermont's Middlebury College, where Hunt family members[12] had been early benefactors.[13]
Hunt was the son of Jonathan Hunt and Lavinia (Swan) Hunt.[14] His father was born in Massachusetts and was an early pioneer and land speculator in Vermont. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Vermont from 1794 to 1796. Hunt's uncle was composer and poet Timothy Swan,[15] and his aunt was married to U.S. Congressman Lewis R. Morris.[16]
Hunt and his wife Jane had five children: artist Jane Maria Hunt, physician Jonathan Hunt, painter William Morris Hunt, architect Richard Morris Hunt and early photographer and New York attorney Leavitt Hunt.[19][20] Following Hunt's death, his wife took their children to Geneva, Paris and Rome for an extended Grand Tour that stretched into a dozen years. The Hunt children were able to study the arts in European academies and become part of an American expatriate community in Europe. Four of Hunt's children returned to America. The fifth, his namesake son Jonathan, remained in Paris, where he studied medicine at the University of Paris and subsequently practiced medicine until his early death, a suicide in 1874. (Jonathan Hunt's son William Morris Hunt also committed suicide, at the Isles of Shoals in New Hampshire.)[21] Hunt's nephew was Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt.[22]
^Congressman Hunt's uncle, Gen. Arad Hunt, donated in 1813 over 5,000 acres (20 km2) of land at Albany, Vermont, to Middlebury College. The rents from these lands were an important source of income for the then-fledgling institution.