Beginning in 1840, Andrew Hunter became one of the local attorneys for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), and for many years assisted it, first in acquiring the right of way to lay tracks in the county for the connection at Harper's Ferry, although beginning in 1844 Hunter was also a director of the Winchester & Potomac Railroad Company and represented them in their attempts to be taken over by the B&O as it tried to lay track to Wheeling (then in western Virginia).

[2] Jefferson County voters elected Hunter as one of their (part-time) representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1846, and he also worked for the B&O while in Richmond, but neither he nor his colleague William B. Thompson won re-election.

It springs not so much from friendship for him, as from a latent conviction that the candidate upon whom the Convention will ultimately unite will be some considerate, moderate man like Hunter, to the exclusion of egoists and radicals like Wise, who expose themselves to the censure of the many by imprudent letters, or, like Douglas, who repel the necessary few by denunciatory speeches.

[14]Charles Town, where Hunter lived, was only seven miles (11 km) from Harpers Ferry, where John Brown's 1859 raid produced a huge uproar, drawing national attention.

[18] The circuit judge and the out-of-town attorneys having left, it was Hunter who was in charge of everything local relating to Brown during his final month.

[16] It was Hunter who opened and read every letter addressed to Brown, retaining 70 to 80 that "he could not get, never would get, as I thought they were improper"; they were shipped to Richmond along with the other documents.

[28] After the resignation of banker and Confederate officer Edwin L. Moore (of the 2nd Virginia Infantry, in which his lawyer son Henry Clay Hunter fought as a private before receiving a lieutenant's commission in July 1861),[29] Hunter then became State Senator for his district, by then occupied by Federal troops (and the U.S. Congress having recognized West Virginia as the 35th State).

Moses Hoge Hunter (1814-1899), served as chaplain of the 3rd Pennsylvania cavalry during that war, and would later edit the memoirs of their cousin, Union General David Hunter (particularly despised by Confederate sympathizers in western Virginia because of his raids, including that which destroyed the pro-Confederate Virginia Military Institute).

Beginning in 1865, when West Virginia legislators moved the Jefferson County seat from Charles Town to Shepherdstown.

[33] Andrew Hunter died at his home in Charles Town, Jefferson County, West Virginia, on November 21, 1888.

[7] His nephew Robert W. Hunter, also a Confederate officer and delegate, would survive the war and become the Secretary of Virginia Military Records.