John Wesley Hunt

John Wesley Hunt (1773–1849) was a prominent businessman and early civic leader in Lexington, Kentucky. He was one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains. Hunt enslaved as many as 77 people, many of them children, including farm and industrial and domestic workers. John Wesley Hunt was born in 1773 in Trenton, New Jersey. He was the son of a Lt. Col. in the Revolutionary War, Abraham Hunt, and Theodosia Pearson Hunt. Moving to Lexington in 1795, he became a merchant, slavetrader, horsebreeder, hemp manufacturer, and banker. In 1799, President John Adams named Hunt as postmaster of Lexington. A horsebreeder, he introduced the Messenger strain to Kentucky in the winter of 1839–1840. He married Catherine Grosh, and in 1814, he built a two-story brick mansion known as "Hopemont" (today known as The Hunt-Morgan House) for him and his wife. Their son Charlton Hunt became the first mayor of Lexington.