Philip Hunton, as he was first called, signed his name (or made his mark) on 20 Feb 1688/89 below a humble Addresse of the Inhabitants and train soldiers of ye Province of New Hampshire to the governor of Massachusetts.
Jeremy Belknap, the first New Hampshire historian, quoted a letter from Ward Clark to someone named "King": "The same day that Colonel Winthrop Hilton was killed, a company of Indians who had pretended friendship, who the year before had been peaceably conversant with the inhabitants of Kingston, and seemed to be thirsting after the blood of the enemy, came into the town, and ambushing the road, killed Samuel Winslow and Samuel Huntoon.
They also took Philip Huntoon and Jacob Gilman, and carried them to Canada; where, after some time, they purchased their own redemption by building a saw-mill for the governor after the English mode."
Philip died May 10, 1752, having fathered six children, four of them surviving to adulthood, and two of them sons who had many descendants.
In the 1790 census, just a century after his first appearance, twenty-five families - containing 141 people in all - were headed by someone named Huntoon.