Author: Hunt, Mary
Biography:
HUNT, Mary (1764-1834: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 12 Nov. 1764 and baptised on 23 Nov. at Stoke Doyle, Northamptonshire, the daughter of Rev. Rowland Hunt, DD (1708-85), the rector, and Mary Wells (1732-1801), daughter of Francis Wells, vicar of Oundle, who had married in 1761. Nothing is known of her education but her father was learned and her mother’s father was Cambridge-educated clergy. After her father’s death in 1785, she and her mother worked as governess and housekeeper to the family of John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806), a British general who became the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada in 1791. He had married a wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim (1762-1850). On their departure for Canada, they left several daughters to the care and instruction of Mary Hunt and her mother at their country house, Wolford Lodge, Honiton, Devonshire. In early 1793, Mary Hunt spent four months with the children in Bath and published two works anonymously with Richard Cruttwell: a translation of Charles Villette, Essay on the Happiness of the Life to Come (1793) and the instructional Lectures on Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy, for the Use of Children (1794). Elizabeth Simcoe and Mary Hunt (senior), despite differences in class and income, remained good friends. After her mother’s death in 1801, Mary Hunt became a sub-preceptress to Princess Charlotte on an annual salary of £300, probably through the influence of the Simcoes. She was a close friend of Elizabeth Smith and Henrietta Maria Bowdler (qq.v.) and the novelist Mary Anne Burges (1763-1813). She died on 5 Dec. 1834 and was buried in the cathedral yard at St. David’s, Exeter, on 13 Dec. She never married. She first printed “On Visiting the Ruins of an Ancient Abbey in Devonshire” anonymously in GM (Oct. 1786, 885) but allowed herself (and Dunkeswell Abbey) to be identified in the collection assembled by Richard Polwhele (q.v.), listed here. (ancestry.co.uk 16 Jan. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 16 Jan. 2024; Northampton Mercury 19 Nov. 1785; Exeter Flying Post 11 Dec. 1834; Lucia McMahon, The Celebrated Elizabeth Smith [2022], 59-67, et passim; CCEd 16 Jan. 2024; Mary Quayle Innis (ed.), Mrs Simcoe’s Diary [2007], 41-6, 118-23 et passim; George Streynsham Master, Notices of the Family of Hunt [1880]; West Country Poets, 267; DCB [Simcoes]) AA
Other Names:
- Miss Hunt