Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, Jr. born on February 17, 1889 in Carson Township, Illinois , United States - died November 29, 1974 in Dallas, Texas, was an American oil tycoon.

Birth and early life

Better known as H. L. Hunt, he was born in Illinois, the youngest of eight children. His father, also named Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, was a prosperous farmer-entrepreneur; his mother was Ella Rose (Myers) Hunt.

He was educated at home, and as a teenager travelled to various places before settling in Arkansas, where he was running a cotton plantation by 1912. He ended up making a fortune in the oil business and was reportedly the world's first billionaire.

His family

Hunt married three times, and had fourteen children. His first wife was Lyda Bunker (died 1955), whom he married in Arkansas on November 26, 1914. They had six children, the best-known of whom are Bunker , Lamar and Herbert . In 1925, he married (bigamously) Frania Tye, and they had four children, before splitting up in 1942. Hunt then had four more children with his mistress, a Hunt Oil Company secretary named Ruth Ray, whom he married in 1957.

Here are the names of his fourteen children, not necessarily in order:

1. William Herbert Hunt (born c. 1929)
2. Nelson Bunker Hunt
3. Helen Lee Cartledge Hunt (deceased)
4. Haroldina Franch Hunt (deceased)
5. Howard Lee Hunt (deceased)
6. Hugh Hunt (whereabouts unknown)
7. H. L. "Hassie" Hunt III (born c. 1918) - diagnosed as a schizophrenic in the early 1940s; co-owner of Hunt Petroleum
8. Margaret Hunt Hill (born c. 1916), philanthropist and co-owner of Hunt Petroleum
9. Caroline Rose Hunt (born c. 1923) - owner of a chain of hotels
10. Lamar Hunt (born August 2, 1932) - co-founder of the American Football League and the North American Soccer League; owner of the Kansas City Chiefs
11. Ray Lee Hunt (born c. 1943) - chairman of Hunt Oil
12. June Hunt (born c. 1944) - host of a daily religious radio show, Hope for the Heart
13. Helen Lakelly Hunt (born c. 1949) - a pastoral counselor in Dallas; co-manager of the Hunt Alternatives Fund , one of the family's charitable arms
14. Swanee Hunt (born c. 1950) - former U.S. ambassador to Austria; now head of the Women and Public Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-manager of the Hunt Alternatives Fund

Following his death in 1974, H. L. Hunt was buried in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas, Texas.

External links

• Biography of H. L. Hunt by Jerrell Dean Palmer in the Handbook of Texas Online
• Article on Bunker Hunt by S. C. Gwynne in TexasMonthly, September 2001