Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hunt, Robert (d.1608?)
HUNT, ROBERT (d. 1608?), minister at James Town, Virginia, was apparently a son of Robert Hunt, M.A., vicar of Reculver, Kent. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, proceeded LL.B. in 1606, and took orders. In the same year he was chosen by Richard Hakluyt, with the approval of Archbishop Bancroft, to accompany the first settlers to Virginia. The expedition sailed from Blackwall on 19 Dec. 1606, and arrived in Virginia on 27 April 1607. During the voyage Hunt was seriously ill. A settlement having been formed at a place which was called James Town, Hunt on Sunday, 21 June, there celebrated the communion, that being the first occasion on which the ordinance was observed by Englishmen in America. By his efforts a rude church was soon afterwards erected, but it was burnt down, together with the greater part of the dwellings of the new colony, in the ensuing winter. Hunt lost his books and all that he had except the clothes on his back. A new church was reared in the spring of 1608, but Hunt did not long survive.
[Cooper's Athenae Cantabr. ii. 493-4; Anderson's Colonial Church, 2nd edit. i. 168-83.]