Robert Newton Quarles Hunt was the second child of Squire Hunt and his wife, Sidney Ann Cooper Hunt. He was named Robert after his mother's grandfather, Robert Cooper, a Revolutionary War captain in South Carolina. The name Newton came from his grandmother, Catherine Brakefield Cooper, who had a brother named Isaac Newton Brakefield. The name Newton was used several times in the names of her family members. It is unknown why he was given the name Quarles.

Robert was a saddler by trade, and farmer.

Robert married Mary Jane Jackson in Charlotte, Dickson County, TN on April 4, 1844. They had six sons who died in infancy and seven children who survived to adulthood: Martha Ann, Virginia Angelica (named for Mary Jane's mother), Sidney Elizabeth Jane (named for Robert's mother), William Daniel Fagan, Twins Nanny Beauregard and Annie Davis, and Mary Serena Hunt. Mary Serena was named for Robert's sister, Mary Cyrena Hunt Morrow, the third child of Squire and Sidney.

In his early life, Robert lived in Franklin, TN; Lawrence County, TN; Nashville, TN and Culleoka, Maury County, TN. After his marriage to Mary Jane Jackson, he had a farm in Charlotte, Dickson County, TN on property that was given to Mary Jane by her father upon her marriage. After the Civil War and the death of Mary Jane in 1871, he moved his family to Nashville, TN. After several of his children moved to Louisville, KY, he had moved there as well by 1890. On the 1900 census, he was living in Louisville with his widowed daughter, Virginia Angelica Cabler, and three of her children. Sometime after 1910, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where his daughters Annie Hunt Theobald and Mary Serena Hunt Bird lived. His son, who was called Fagan, had also moved to Chicago but had died in 1904. Robert lived with his daughter, Mary Serena Bird, until his death in 1914 of pneumonia.