Background
Hunt was born in New Orleans in 1862. He was the seventh child and sixth son of William Henry Hunt, lawyer and Unionist, and his second wife, Elizabeth Augusta Ridgely. His father's mother, Louisa Gaillard, from whom he received his name, was sister of John Gaillard, who long represented South Carolina in the United States Senate, and of Chancellor Theodore Gaillard. His mother, who died when he was less than two years old, was a granddaughter of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York. Born of aristocracy so complete that he never felt need of asserting it, and brought up by a father of character both sturdy and scrupulous and by devoted aunts of old-fashioned gentility, he had always the high qualities and traditions of the old-school gentleman, with perhaps a few of the latter's prejudices, humorously maintained.