James Winford Hunt

Hunt was born on July 9, 1875, at the Kaw Indian Agency in Indian Territory, where his father was the government physician. When he was five the family moved to Estacado, the Quaker colony in Crosby County, and he grew up working for neighboring ranchers before graduating from Central Plains Academy in 1893. He edited the Texan Press at Plainview, married Mary Anthony in 1906, and later wrote The Saga of Grandma Rogers (1926) and a series called "Buffalo Days" for Holland's Magazine. He died on March 12, 1934, still McMurry's president.

What the plaque says

Born in present Oklahoma, James Winford Hunt grew up on the Texas High Plains. A newspaper publisher for several years, he became a Methodist minister in 1903. While a pastor in Abilene, he convinced the Northwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Church to build a college in the town. The school, McMurry College, opened in 1923 with Dr. Hunt as president. Known widely for his writings and sermons, he became a successful Christian educator. Texas Sesquincentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.6 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 13 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 13 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Abilene State Park — 18 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• Claiborne Walker Merchant — steps away
• Willis, Thomas Middlebrook — steps away
• Morgan Jones — steps away
• Abilene Reporter-News — 0.8 mi