Jonathan Hunt (Vermont congressman)

Jonathan Hunt (August 12, 1787Template:SpndMay 15, 1832) was an American lawyer and politician. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives for the state of Vermont and was a member of the prominent Hunt family of Vermont.

Early life

Born on August 12, 1787, in Vernon, in the Vermont Republic, Hunt graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1807.<ref>Art-Life of William Morris Hunt, Helen M. Knowlton, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Mass., 1899</ref> Afterwards, Hunt studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1812. Hunt commenced practice in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1812.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont, Henry Burnham, D. Leonard, Brattleboro, 1880</ref> He also carried the rank of General in the Vermont militia, as had his uncle Arad Hunt.<ref>Annals of Brattleboro, 1681-1895, Mary Rogers Cabot, E.L. Hildreth & Co., Brattleboro, Vt., 1921</ref>

Hunt held many political positions in Vermont, and served as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives in 1811, 1816, 1817 and 1824.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He was elected as an Adams candidate to represent Vermont's 1st congressional district in 1827. He served in the United States House of Representatives during the Twentieth, Twenty-first, and Twenty-second Congresses, serving from March 4, 1827, until his death on May 15, 1832.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Hunt was a lifelong friend of statesman and orator Daniel Webster.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The brick home that Hunt had built in Brattleboro, later known as the Colonel Hooker home,<ref>The Jonathan Hunt home was located at the corner of Main and High Streets in Brattleboro.</ref> was the first brick home built in town.<ref>Picturesque Brattleboro, Frank T. Pomeroy, Rudyard Kipling, Picturesque Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass., 1894</ref>

Hunt died in Washington, D.C., on May 15, 1832, aged 44, while still in office.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>Art-life of William Morris Hunt, Helen M. Knowlton, Little Brown & Co., Cambridge, 1899</ref>

A graduate of Dartmouth, Hunt served as a trustee of Vermont's Middlebury College, where Hunt family members<ref>Congressman Hunt's uncle, Gen. Arad Hunt, donated in 1813 over Template:Convert of land at Albany, Vermont, to Middlebury College. The rents from these lands were an important source of income for the then-fledgling institution.</ref> had been early benefactors.<ref>Catalogue of Officers and Students of Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, 1800-1915, Published by the College, 1917</ref>

Hunt was the son of Jonathan Hunt and Lavinia (Swan) Hunt.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and his aunt was married to U.S. Congressman Lewis R. Morris.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Hunt married Jane Maria Leavitt of Suffield, Connecticut.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She was part of the New England Dwight family which was heavily involved in the shipping business and in the purchase of the Western Reserve. Jane's father, Thaddeus Leavitt, was a successful merchant whose clipper ships traded with the West Indies. He invented an early cotton gin and was one of the principal purchasers of the Western Reserve lands in Ohio.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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.<ref>Vermont: The Green Mountain State, Walter Hill Crockett, New York, 1921</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hunt's nephew was Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>