Thomas HUNT, Sr.
The following bio was taken from page 252 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.
Transcribed by Gloria Riley
Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator
The ancestor of many Rusk County Hunts, Thomas Hunt, Sr., lived in Texas only five years before his death about 1857. His offspring, however, peopled the lands of southern Rusk County around the Pine Hill and Brachfield roads out of Henderson to an area near the Roquemore Church.
Thomas, Sr. was born in North Carolina about 1787, first appearing in known records there on the 1820 census of Rutherford County, North Carolina at the southern edge of the Great Smokey Mountains.
About 1821, he took his family on the westward movement from the Carolinas through the mountains to Blount County, Tennessee, where most of his children grew to adulthood and had families of their own. Census records indicate most were farmers, but tradition has it that some worked in the quarries of that area.
Thomas, Sr. left his Cloyd’s Creek area farmlands in 1851 and brought his wife and four sons (some sources indicate a fifth) and their families to Rusk County, settling on lands first claimed by son Absolum. There he died in 1857 surrounded by his wife, Lucy, and sons: John, William (Billy), Absolum (Ab), and Thomas, Jr. Daughter Betsy evidently later moved to Young County, Texas with her husband, James Bedford. There is evidence that sons, Madison (Van Zandt County) and Samuel, and daughters, Mahala Bradberry and Martha (Carsa) Harvey, also came to Texas. One son, James, and perhaps, Stephen, did not make the move to Texas.
The Hunt families stayed close to the land with most early children and grandchildren involved in farming or allied activities, such as the cotton gin owned by the John Hunt family.
John Hunt, son of Thomas, Sr., was born about 1815 in North Carolina and died in Rusk County. He evidently had three wives, all of whom he married while he was living in Tennessee. They were Nancy Patrick, Polly O’Dear, and Lisa Goforth, the latter listed on the 1860 census. Children included: William, James, John, Miles, Samuel, George, and William.
William Marshall (Billy) Hunt, son of Thomas, Sr., was born about 1816 in North Carolina. The last living son of Thomas, Sr., died July 6, 1906 in Rusk County. He had two wives, Eliza Peebles, who died in Texas, and Martha Jimmerson Newman, who died in January 1906 in Rusk County. Children were: Susan (Harris), Thomas J., James Luvisa (Ables), Stephen, William Marshall, Joseph Lafayette, Samuel Houston, and stepchildren, Mary Alice, James, and David Newman.
Thomas Hunt, Jr., son of Thomas, Sr., was born in North Carolina about 1821, evidently just before the move to Tennessee. His three wives were Mary (Polly) Findley, Nancy Leopard Adams, and Kizzie Fears. Children were John W., James M., Martha Ann (Slay), Thomas Leander, Samuel, Josiah Murphy, William T., Findley, G. A. (Bud), Andrew J., Sarah (Walker), Hugh, Gordon, Luther, James, L. T., and Lonnie.
Thomas, Sr. and his wife Lucy and their sons, Thomas, Jr. and Billy, are buried with other descendants at the Hunt Cemetery near Pine Hill and Brachfield.
Written by Deason Hunt