Following the death of his mother in 1787 he was placed under the guardianship of Joseph Evans, a minister at Upper Chapel.

[2] In 1809 he moved to Bath to take up a post as a Unitarian Minister at Trim Street Chapel,[4] there he met and married Mary Hayward,[5] with whom he would have six children,[2] one of whom, Sylvester Joseph Hunter, converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit priest.

In 1843, he was granted a coat of arms and chose as his motto Vita si Cervina (avoid me if you are a deer).

From his schooldays onwards, he had been an enthusiastic collector of memorial inscriptions and similar genealogical gleanings.

Between 1894 and 1896, the Harleian Society published four volumes of his collection of pedigrees under the title Familiae Minorum Gentium.