Hunt, Absalom

Hunt, Absalom a Methodist Episcopal minister, was born in Virginia Dec. 4,1773, and emigrated when a boy to East Tennessee, and later removed to Fleming Co., Kentucky. He was licensed as a local preacher about 1793. In 1815 he joined the Kentucky Conference on trial, and was sent to the Madison Circuit. He was next appointed to the Lexington Circuit, and two years afterwards successively to the Hinkstone, Limestone, Mt. Sterling, and Fleming Circuits. In 1823 he was superannuated, but returned at the next session of the Conference, and was sent to the Liberty Circuit. From 1825- 28 he served as supernumerary at Paris, Lexington, and Hinkstone, and then returned to the superannuated list, finding his health inadequate to the active work of the ministry. He died February 21,1841. Hunt was a "natural orator," and, "though comparatively illiterate and unpolished, such was his native good sense, his deep acquaintance with the human heart, his quick perception of the characters of men, and the unaffected kindness of his manners, that he was not only generally popular as a preacher, but was often the admired favorite with the learned and the refined." — Methodist Monthly, 1850; Redford, Methodism in Kentucky, 2, 346 sq. (J. H.W.)