Author: Hunn, Anthony
Biography:
Hunn, Anthony (1767-1834: ancestry.com)
An immigrant from Germany in 1797, he was born Anton Christian Hunnius in Kapellendorf in Saxony, where his father was the Amtmann (magistrate). His parents, Friedrich Wilhelm Eberhard and Clara Friederike (Weber) Hunnius, gave him a good education. He became a physician. In 1788 he married Sarah Catherine Wise, with whom he had at least six children, the last born 1823. He published some plays and poetry in German between 1788 and 1791 but then left Germany, anglicized his name, and settled in America as a doctor, first in Kentucky and then on a "plantation" near Danville TN. From there, in 1830, he published an unsuccessful proposal to offer medical training in conjunction with modern languages, music, and fencing. His one poetical attempt in English (1812) was also a failure, since he presented it as a sample of a projected epic poem to be called "The Columbiad"--a title attempted also by others from 1795 onwards, notably by Joel Barlow (q.v.). His second wife was Theresa Peach, whom he married in 1827 and with whom he had four more children. (ancestry.com 9 May 2019; Hampden C. Lawson, "The Early Medical Schools of Kentucky," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 24:2 [1950] 168-75)