Photographic Archives, Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville

By Susie J. Pak

Origins

A Lexington, Kentucky native, Abraham Dagworthy Hunt was educated at Transylvania University and was a lawyer by trade. His father, John Wesley Hunt, was“ a wealthy hemp merchant, banker and real estate owner.” In 1829, A. D. Hunt moved to Florence, Alabama, where he married and entered the business of manufacturing cotton goods. He then moved to Louisville and became the president of the Lexington and Frankfort Railroad Company. In 1850, he opened the banking firm of A. D. Hunt & Co. with Alpheus Camillus Badger, a New Hampshire native who had been a clerk in the brokerage firm of F. Massol & Co. In 1857, when the firm survived a panic, The Courier-Journal reported,“ The house of A. D. Hunt & Co. has stood firm, and now occupies a higher position than ever in the confidence of the public.”

Portrait of Edward H. Hilliard, 1928.

In 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, A. D. Hunt closed his firm and went to Europe, while Badger moved to Chicago. The Louisville Daily Courier reported that the Hunt family expected to stay abroad for several years. After the war, Hunt returned and resumed business. The new name of his firm was Hunt & Morton( for partner Henry Clay Morton) and later Hunt, Morton & Quigley( for partner Edward P. Quigley), although Quigley died unexpectedly that year at the age of 28. In 1866, the Hunt & Morton partnership was dissolved, and Hunt retired. H. C. Morton left to form the firm of Morton, Galt & Co.

A. D. Hunt & Co.( 1872)

In 1872, A. D. Hunt re-formed his namesake firm with partners John James Byron( J. J. B.) Hilliard and George Keats Speed. Born in North Carolina, J. J. B. Hilliard was the son of farmer Isaac Hilliard and his cousin, Lucy Emily Hilliard. He was an 1850 graduate of Columbian College in Washington, DC, and an 1852 graduate of Harvard Law School. During the Civil War, Hilliard served as a major in the Confederacy. After the war, he joined the firm of Brannin, Summers and Company, a New Orleans cotton commission house. In 1869, he moved from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky, where he entered the commodities shipping business. In 1871, he married the former Maria Louisa Henning Hobbs, a Kentucky native, who was the daughter of James W. Henning. Maria was the widow of Basil Hobbs, a captain in the Union Army.

Hilliard and Hunt’ s partner, George Keats Speed, came from a prominent Kentucky family. The son of Philip Speed, George K. Speed was a descendant of English immigrants who settled in Virginia in 1665. His paternal uncle, the Honorable James Speed, was the Attorney General for President Abraham Lincoln. His father

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