Robert Hunter FRS ( – 31 March 1734) was a British army officer, playwright and colonial administrator who successively served as the governors of

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and

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Early life

Robert Hunter was born in

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, grandson of Robert Hunter, 20th Laird of

Hunterston Hunterston, by the Firth of Clyde, is a coastal area in Ayrshire, Scotland. It is the seat and estate of the Hunter family. As an area of flat land adjacent to deep natural water, it has been the site of considerable actual and proposed industri ...

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, being the son of lawyer James Hunter and his wife Margaret Spalding.

Career

He had been apprenticed to an apothecary before running away to join the

Scots Army The Scots Army ( Scots: ''Scots Airmy'') was the army of the Kingdom of Scotland between the Restoration in 1660 and Union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 following the 1706 Treaty of Union and the Acts of Union that enacted it. A ...

. He became an officer in 1689 who rose to become a general, and married a woman of high rank.

American colonies

He was a man of business whose first address to the New Jersey Assembly was barely 300 words long. In it, he stated, "If honesty is the best policy, plainness must be the best oratory." He was appointed Lieutenant Governor of

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in 1707, but was captured by a corsair on his way to Virginia, taken to

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, and in 1709 exchanged for the French Bishop of Quebec. He was then appointed Governor of New York and sailed to America with 3,000 Palatine refugees as settlers in 1710. In 1715 he advocated the local minting of copper coins, but the king refused. Governor Hunter's philosophy was that "the true Interests of the People and Government are the same, I mean A Government of Laws. No other deserves the Name, and are never Separated or Separable but in Imagination by Men of Craft." Hunter was succeeded as Governor by

Pieter Schuyler Pieter Schuyler (17 September 1657 – 19 February 1724) was the first mayor of Albany, New York. A long-serving member of the executive council of the Province of New York, he acted as governor of the Province of New York on three occasions ...

as acting governor from 1719 to 1720 and finally by William Burnet, whose post as Comptroller of Customs was given to Hunter in exchange.

Jamaica

Hunter was then Governor of

from 1727 until his death on 31 March 1734. While in Jamaica, Hunter waged an unsuccessful war against the

Jamaican Maroons Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery in the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of Free black people in Jamaica, free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern Pari ...

. He was a member of the

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) is a United Kingdom-based charitable organisation (registered charity no. 234518). It was first incorporated under Royal Charter in 1701 as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Pa ...

. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in May 1709.

Personal life

Hunter was married to Elizabeth ( Orby) Hay, the daughter of Sir Thomas Orby, 1st Baronet of Croyland. Elizabeth was the widow of Brig.-Gen. Lord John Hay, son of

John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale PC (1645 – 20 April 1713) was a Scottish nobleman. Early life Hay was the eldest son of John Hay, 1st Marquess of Tweeddale and his wife, Lady Jean Scott, daughter of Walter Scott, 1st Earl of Buccleuch. ...

. Together, they were the parents of at least one son and three daughters (Henrietta Hunter, Catherine ( Hunter) Sloper, Charlotte Hunter), including:Mosley, Charles, editor. ''Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes.''

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington is the List of municipalities in Delaware, most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish colonization of the Americas, Swedish settlement in North America. It lie ...

, U.S.A.:

Burke's Peerage Burke's Peerage Limited is a British genealogical publisher, considered an authority on the order of precedence of noble families and information on the lesser nobility of the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1826, when the Anglo-Irish genea ...

(Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003, volume 2, page 2003. * Thomas Orby Hunter (–1769), MP for

Winchelsea Winchelsea () is a town in the county of East Sussex, England, located between the High Weald and the Romney Marsh, approximately south west of Rye and north east of Hastings. The current town, which was founded in 1288, replaced an earli ...

who married Jacomina Caroline Bullenden, the daughter of Colonel William Bullenden. Hunter died on 31 March 1734 in Jamaica, West Indies.

Playwriting

His play, '' Androboros'', written in 1714, was the first known play to be written and published in the North American British Colonies.Davis, Peter A. (2015). ''From Androboros to the First Amendment.''

Iowa City Iowa City is the largest city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. At the time of the 2020 census the population was 74,828, making it the state's fifth-most populous city. The Iowa City metropolitan area, which enc ...

University of Iowa Press The University of Iowa Press is a university press that is part of the University of Iowa. Established in 1969, thUniversity of Iowa Pressis an academic publisher of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. The UI Press is the only univers ...

. p. 56.

References

External links

Biography of Robert Hunter

New Jersey State Library The New Jersey State Library, based in Trenton, New Jersey, was established in 1796 to serve the information needs of New Jersey's Governor of New Jersey, Governor, New Jersey Legislature, Legislature and Judiciary of New Jersey, Judiciary. The S ...

Colonial Governors of New York

New-York Historical Society The New York Historical (known as the New-York Historical Society from 1804 to 2024) is an American history museum and library on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum. It ...

1660s births 1734 deaths Military personnel from Edinburgh Governors of the Province of New York Colonial governors of New Jersey Colonial governors of Virginia Governors of Jamaica British Army generals Fellows of the Royal Society Scottish dramatists and playwrights British Army personnel of the War of the Spanish Succession Civil servants from Edinburgh {{Jamaica-politician-stub