Governor of New York State. Washington Hunt entered upon the study of the law at the age of eighteen, and in 1834 was admitted to the bar at Lockport, NY. In 1836, he was appointed the first Judge of Niagara County. He commenced his political career as a Democrat, but subsequently allied himself with the Whig Party, by which he was elected to Congress as a Representative for New York's 34th District for three successive terms — from 1843 to 1849 . In 1849, be was elected Comptroller of the State of New York. In 1850, he was elected Governor of New York, by the small plurality of 262 votes, receiving 214,614 votes, to 214,352 cast for Democratic Party candidate Horatio Seymour and 3,416 for William Lawrence Chaplin, abolitionist candidate of the Liberty Party. In 1852, Gov. Hunt was again a candidate, but was defeated by Mr. Seymour, who received 264,121 votes against 241,525 given for Hunt. Following this defeat, he stayed away from politics until the outbreak of the rebellion, when he felt it a duty to give whatever power and influence he possessed to the cause of the Union, and consequently opposed the Radicals. He was a member of the Democratic National Convention held at Chicago in 1864, and labored earnestly to secure the adoption of a platform which would have secured the success of Gen. George Brinton McClellan and the restoration of the Union. Subsequently, Gov. Hunt took little part in public affairs, with the exception of a few speeches made in Connecticut in the spring of 1866 in aid of his friend, James Edward English, the Democratic candidate for Governor of that state. For the last twelve years of his life, his time was divided between his home at Lockport and his residence in New York City. His life was one which a man of scholarly tastes, a cultivated mind, and an ample fortune would have chosen. He loved horticulture, his books, his friends — and they were many — Republican institutions and the church, and he found abundant employment in doing good in his unostentatious way. Washington Hunt was a conscientious and zealous member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and felt a deep interest in extending its influence and promoting its growth. He was repeatedly a delegate to the General Conventions of the Church, and was for years prominent among the laymen of his Diocese. The consolations of religion were his support during the suffering of his last few months, and he entered upon his immortality with that joy which is born of faith and holy living. Washington Hunt was not, in the classical sense of the term, a Great Statesman; but, better than this, he was a man of extraordinary ability, who was true to himself, to his own convictions of right, true to his country and true to his God. He was a gentleman of what is now unfortunately considered "the old school" — a man of charming manner; dignified, yet always approachable, who, in contributing to others' happiness, was happy himself.