Robert Waterman Hunter (July 12, 1837 – April 3, 1916) was a Virginia newspaper editor and Confederate officer who twice served single terms in the Virginia House of Delegates and became the first Secretary of Virginia Military Records, as well as served as federal Inspector of Public Lands during the first Cleveland administration.
Early and family life
Born on July 12, 1837, in Martinsburg to Martha Crawford Abell Hunter (1812-1890), the wife of Edmund P. Hunter (1809-1854) who was a prominent lawyer in what became the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia in Robert's lifetime, twice served as one of Berkeley County's delegates in the Virginia House of Delegates and owned the Martinsburg Gazette. Robert was the eldest son in a family of seven children. Although his father died of cholera when Robert was 17, their financial circumstances permitted Robert to attend the University of Virginia. He had two elder sisters, the eldest of whom, Sarah Forrest Hunter, married Peyton Randolph Harrison Jr. (1832-1861), whose sister would become Robert's first wife but die of childbirth complications. The family also included several younger sisters and two younger brothers, David B. Hunter (1843-1864) and John A. Hunter (1845-1921).
Robert W. Hunter would marry three times. His first bride was his brother in law's sister, Mary Clifton Harrison Hunter (1839-1862); both mother and infant son died in 1862. Hunter remarried at war's end (1865) in King George, Virginia, to Margaret Stuart Hunter (1837-1893). They had three daughters and two sons: Julia Calvert Hunter Kennedy (1868-1946), Martha Forrest Hunter Campbell (1869-1939), Caroline Stuart Holliday Hunter (1872-1950), Richard Stuart Hunter (1875-1960) and Edmund Pendleton Hunter (1877-1938). The widower married Eliza Selden Washington on October 29, 1895, in Norfolk, Virginia. She survived him, and they had no children.
Career
By 1860 Hunter both operated and taught at a private academy in Winchester.
Confederate service
During the American Civil War, many in northwestern Virginia disagreed with Virginia's secession from the Union after the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 , and instead attended the two Wheeling conventions in Wheeling to secede from Virginia, as eventually happened in 1863. However, no delegates from Berkeley County attended either Wheeling assembly, as many in the county either sympathized with the Confederacy (six Confederate and 2 Union companies were recruited from the county) and the county's railroad lines (especially the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad), Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and roads made it of crucial strategic importance (Union forces occupied Martinsburg for 32 months and Confederates for about 16 months).
Meanwhile, Robert W. Hunter enlisted in Company D of the 2nd Virginia Infantry on April 18, 1861, at Martinsburg and received a lieutenant's commission. He was appointed the unit's adjutant on June 17, 1861; the last unit entry that shows him as present was made in November/December 1861. Hunter later served as chief of staff to General John Brown Gordon and rose to the rank of major. His brother-in-law, Peyton R. Harrison, Jr., died at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 (although Hunter survived), and his younger brother David died at the disastrous (for Confederacy) Battle of Cedar Creek in 1864.
Residents of Berkeley County (generally those serving in the Confederate military such as Hunter, since West Virginians as a whole approved statehood despite the Jones-Imboden Raid) elected Hunter and re-elected veteran politician Israel Robinson to represent them in the Virginia House of Delegates in Richmond (though Robinson died during this term and was replaced by fellow Stonewall Brigade officer William B. Colston). Neither Hunter nor Colston resigned his military commission during his part-time legislative service, and Hunter was even selected to carry General Gordon's flag of truce at Appomattox Court House as that Confederate General met Union General Philip Sheridan shortly before General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.