Charlton Hunt

Charlton Hunt (December 3, 1801 – December 27, 1836) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the first mayor of Lexington, Kentucky following its incorporation.

Biography Charlton Hunt was born on December 3, 1801, to businessman John Wesley Hunt and his wife Catherine Grosh. His maternal grandmother Mary Charlton was the maternal aunt of Francis Scott Key, writer of "The Star-Spangled Banner" making him his first cousin, once removed. After Hunt graduated with a degree in classical studies at Transylvania University in June 1821, he moved to Frederick, Maryland where he studied law under future Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In 1824, he married Rebecca T. Warfield, a daughter of Elisha Warfield with whom he had seven children: Elisha, John, Mary, Katherine, Ann, Elizabeth and Rebecca.

Hunt returned to Kentucky in 1822 where he began practicing law in Paris, Kentucky before opening an office in Lexington, Kentucky. Hunt was inducted on January 12, 1832, in a ceremony at the court house in which he received his oath from Judge T.M. Hickey, before he administered it himself to his fellow councilmen. Hunt was reelected to two more one-year terms in 1833 and 1834 during which the city was hit by a major cholera epidemic and Hunt established the city's first public school, Morton High School named after its sponsor William Morton. Hunt's nephew John Hunt Morgan was a Confederate general in the American Civil War and his grandnephew Thomas Hunt Morgan was a biologist and Nobel Prize laureate.