William Gibbes was born at Boston, Massachussets in 1791. He was the eldest child of Samuel and Elizabeth (Gibbes) Shepherd Hunt. His father, a descendant of Enoch Hunt of Titenden, Buckinghamshire, who was admitted freeman of Newport, R. I, in 1638, was a graduate of Harvard and the third of his line who studied at that college; his mother was the daughter of William Gibbes, a wealthy planter of Charleston, S. C.
Hunt was educated in Boston under his father and Caleb Bingham, and at the age of fifteen he entered Harvard College where he received the degree of A. B. in 1810. After graduation he practised law for a time although it is not known where he received his legal training.
In 1822 Hunt received the degree of LL. B. from Transylvania.
In the spring of 1815 he emigrated to the Ohio Valley, settling at Lexington, Ky. , then the seat of Western culture. On August 25 of that year he became the editor of the Western Monitor, a Federalist paper of which Thomas T. Skillman was publisher. With the issue for May 25, 1819, it became the Western Monitor and Lexington Advertiser. On Hunt's next undertaking, the Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine, rests the principal source of his fame. The periodical was not much more successful, financially, than its predecessor, but the fault lay neither with the editor nor with the magazine itself. Despite its pedantry and its provincial character, it stands out as one of the best of its kind in the early West. In the short two years of its existence it was a literary spokesman of the region. It carried reviews of contemporary writings in America and England, poems by local and more celebrated authors, occasional disquisitions on politics, a series of stories of Indian fights, and other notes and articles. Horace Holley, the president of Transylvania University, and Constantine Rafinesque were among its faithful contributors. Perhaps the Review's outstanding article was Rafinesque's "Natural History of the Fishes of the Ohio River" which in 1820 was published by Hunt in book form under the title Ichthyologia Ohiensis and as such constitutes his outstanding publication.
According to Mott, after the Review ceased publication, Hunt "apparently . .. began immediately thereafter the publication of a venture with a different appeal--the Masonic Miscellany and Ladies' Literary Magazine (1821 - 23). " Though he practised law a little during the next few years, his chief interests continued to be in journalism. Later he removed to Nashville, Tenn. , where he formed a partnership with John S. Simpson to publish the Nashville Banner. In May 1826 it united with the Nashville Whig to form the Nashville Banner and Nashville Whig. In 1830, with his brother, W. Hassell Hunt, and Peter Tardiff, Hunt purchased the paper and in 1831 it became the National Banner and Nashville Advertiser. Regardless of its name, it was a strong Jacksonian organ. He remained at the head of the Banner until 1833. He was a strong advocate of the classical tradition in literature, and his few writings, mainly of an editorial nature, are simple, forceful, and vigorous. His outstanding address was that delivered at Nashville upon the occasion of the deaths of Jefferson and Adams, July 4, 1826. He died in 1833 survived by his wife.
Hunt came into some national prominence as an ardent supporter of Freemasonry during the Anti-Masonic excitement.
He marrired Fanny Wrigglesworth Hunt on September 28, 1820, in Lexington.
