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William Hunter was born in Yorktown, the son of an Elizabeth City County merchant, also named William Hunter (d. 1742), and his second wife Mary Ann Hunter (d. 1743). He also was half-brother to Colonel John Hunter, the Hampton merchant who became commissary for British forces in America during the French and Indian War (1754–1763), as well as confidante to Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie. Shortly after their parents’ deaths, Hunter’s sister Elizabeth Hunter married John Holt, the one-time mayor of Williamsburg; Hunter and his sisters all minor children moved into the Holts’ home. By that time, Hunter was already apprenticed to William Parks, Virginia’s first public printer. He had reached maturity by 1749, when he was reported as Parks’s shop foreman. Thus when Parks died onboard the