Leavitt Hunt

Leavitt Hunt
Born	1831 Brattleboro, Vermont
Died	February 16, 1907 (aged 75–76) Weathersfield, Vermont
Place of burial	Weathersfield Bow Cemetery, Weathersfield, Vermont
Allegiance	United States of America Union
Service/branch	Union Army
Rank	Colonel
Unit	38th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Army of the Potomac; Adjutant General's Corps; War Department
Battles/wars	American Civil War
Other work	Photographer, attorney, farmer, inventor, art collector

Col. Leavitt Hunt (1831–February 16, 1907) was a Harvard-educated attorney and photography pioneer who was one of the first people to photograph the Middle East. He and a companion, Nathan Flint Baker, traveled to Egypt, the Holy Land, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece on a Grand Tour in 1851–52, making one of the earliest photographic records of the Arab and ancient worlds, including the Great Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, views along the Nile River, the ruins at Petra and the Parthenon in Greece.

The youngest son of General Jonathan Hunt of Vermont and the former Jane Maria Leavitt, and brother to architect Richard Morris Hunt and painter William Morris Hunt, Leavitt Hunt was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, but grew up in Paris following the early death of his father Jonathan Hunt, a Vermont Congressman whose father had been the state's Lieutenant Governor.

Leavitt Hunt attended the Boston Latin School, and subsequently enrolled in a Swiss boarding school, finally taking a law degree from the University of Heidelberg. He then enrolled at the Swiss Military Academy in Thun. Hunt was a scholar: he was fluent in French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and could write in both Persian and Sanskrit.

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