Walter Benjamin Hunter, M. D., Red River Parish, Louisiana
Submitted for the LA GenWeb Archives by Mike Miller, Nov 2001.

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Walter Benjamin Hunter, M.D.  Born and reared in Northwestern Louisiana, where his people have 
long been prominent as planters, merchants, ministers of the Gospel, Dr. Walter Benjamin Hunter 
is a gifted physician and surgeon at Coushatta.  He graduated from the Memphis Hospital Medical 
College in 1909, spent one year in further training at the Memphis General Hospital, and was 
engaged in private practice at Shreveport until he entered the army during the World war.  On 
leaving the army service, October 3, 1919, he located at Coushatta.

He was born on a farm nine miles northeast of Coushatta March 13, 1882, son of Rev. William 
Marshall and Laura Jane (Dupree) Hunter, his father a native of Marshall County, Alabama, and 
his mother of Coushatta.  Her father, Daniel Ivy Dupree, was a son of Rev. John Dupree, who 
left his Catholic faith to become a Baptist minister and did missionary work for that church 
all over North-Western Louisiana in the early days.  Daniel Ivy Dupree served as a Confederate 
soldier during the Civil war, and Dr. Hunter's paternal grandfather, William Hunter, also was 
in the Confederate ranks.  The Hunter family is of Scotch and English ancestry, while the 
Duprees were French.  William Hunter, the grandfather, spent his life as a farmer and died at 
the age of eighty-three.

Rev. William M. Hunter is a Baptist minister and had a total of four days of teaching 
experience.  For thirty-five years he has been a business man.  He educated himself by home 
study and home reading.  His first effort as a merchant was in a country store, but for the 
past sixteen years he has been in business at Coushatta and has been financially interested in 
the Peoples Bank since its organization.  He lived for a number of years at Liberty, where he 
served as justice of the peace eight years.  He is a member of the Silent Brotherhood Masonic 
Lodge and is a Royal Arch Mason, and while at Liberty he was engaged in the ginning business.  
His wife is now sixty-one years of age, and of their thirteen children, eight sons and five 
daughters, one of the daughters, Susie May, was the wife of J. E. Brown, and died leaving two 
sons.  The sons still living besides Doctor Hunter are:  W. 0., a merchant at Harmon;  U. H., 
of the firm of U. H. Hunter & Company, of Coushatta;  Ivy T., associated with W. 0. Hunter at 
Harmon;  Oliver B., with the U. H. Hunter & Company;  E. E., a merchant at Red Oak;  S. D., 
with U. H. Hunter & Company, and M. E., a resident of Coushatta.

Walter Benjamin Hunter acquired his first school advantages while the family lived at Liberty. 
He attended Mount Lebanon College, now a Baptist school, at Pineville, Louisiana.  For fifteen 
months he taught in rural districts, and he spent a number of years in working experience on 
his father's farm.  He left the farm to enter the medical college at Memphis, graduating at the 
age of twenty-seven.  During the World war he volunteered his services as a medical officer, 
was commissioned a first lieutenant and received his first training at Camp Greenleaf, Georgia, 
and later was in the Bellevue Hospital in New York, and on August 31, 1918, embarked for 
overseas.  He was stationed at Evacuation Hospital No. 21 and was in surgical service in 
Hospital No. 114 at Fleury and Villers de Court, and was also at Bazdiles.  Was promoted to 
captain.  He spent ten months overseas and altogether was with the colors eighteen months and 
seven days.

Doctor Hunter is a member of all the medical societies and has served as parish health officer. 
He is a member of the Masonic Lodge at Coushatta and has taken the Council degrees.  He is vice 
president of the Bible class in the Baptist Sunday School and a deacon in the church.

Doctor Hunter married December 22, 1912, Miss Margaret Sue Edwards, daughter of William Allison 
Edwards, of Mount Pleasant, Mississippi.  She was a graduate nurse with the class of 1909 from 
the Memphis General Hospital.  Doctor and Mrs. Hunter have two children:  Margaret Sue and 
Pauline Elizabeth.

NOTE:  The sketch is accompanied by a black and white photograph/drawing of the subject.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 339, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.

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