GAILLARD HUNT
HUNT, GAILLARD, government official, historian, and an authority on questions relating to citizenship, naturalization and protection of Americans abroad, was born September 8, 1862, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, William Henry Hunt, a lawyer, was attorney-general of Louisiana, judge of the United States Court of Claims, secretary of the navy, and envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Russia. His son describes him as a man of "courage, patriotism and ardent devotion to the Union. "The place of his mother, who died when he was one year old, was taken by his father's sister, Emma Lydia Hunt. A descendant on his mother's side from the Livingston family, he counts among his distinguished ancestors, Robert R. Livingston of New York, Edward Livingston, Commodore Charles G. Ridgely, United States Navy; and John Gaillard, senator from South Carolina for many years.
In youth he was fond of the country, passing half his time in New Orleans and the other half at a country-seat on the Hudson river, opposite the Catskill Mountains. He says, "I was pampered and permitted to neglect my education, and did exceedingly ill at school, being indolent and fond of social life and unsteady in application. ' ' He attended the Hopkins grammar school in New Haven, the New Orleans high school and Emerson institute at Washington, District of Columbia. He was prepared for Yale university, but for family reasons was unable finally to take a college course.
He began the practical labor of his life at the age of eighteen as a department clerk, and has been continuously in the civil service since. At present he is chief of the passport bureau, Department of State, United States army. He has written much on civil service questions, has cooperated in the movement for consular reform, and is the author of the "Bill to organize the Consular service" introduced by Senator Lodge, and substantially the same as the bill now pending (1906). He is a member of the Sons of the Revolution,
