H. L. Hunt

H.L. Hunt had three wives and fifteen children. His first wife was Lyda Bunker whom he married in 1914. The couple had seven children. But Hunt was not faithful to her and is said to have married Frania Tye while still married to Lyda. This union produced four children. He also had a relationship with Ruth Ray which resulted in the birth of four more children. Hunt and Ruth got married in 1957.

Hunt died on November 29, 1974, at the age of 85.

H.L. Hunt was born on February 17, 1889, near Ramsey, Fayette County, Illinois. His father was Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, and his mother was Ella Rose Hunt. He was the youngest amongst eight siblings. He received his primary education at home.

He travelled a lot as a young man and worked in a number of odd jobs. By 1912, he was running a cotton plantation, having settled in Arkansas. During the 1910s he acquired around 15,000 acres of land in Arkansas and Louisiana. He grew cotton and flourished for a while. However, with the end of the World War I, the cotton market collapsed, which led to his cotton lands losing their value.

After hearing rumors of an oil strike in El Dorado, Arkansas, he decided to head out there, and began trading in oil leases. Using multiple business tactics, he soon became the owner of several oil producing wells in El Dorado.

Hunt continued to drill wells in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana for the rest of the 1920s. He continued doing so till he had 100 producing wells throughout the South and the Southwest.

Later, he met C.M. Joiner who had just discovered oil on his 4000 acres in Rusk County Texas. However, he needed capital to drill, which he lacked at that moment. Neither was he in a condition to borrow any, being too much in debt. He even tried to sell his land, but the large oil companies were not interested.

Hunt offered C.M. Joiner $30,000 in cash, and $1.2 million in oil when it was produced. Thus, Hunt acquired rights to the greatest oil discovery of that time.

Hunt was a highly successful businessman who founded the Hunt Oil Company in 1936. Eventually the company became the largest independent oil producer in the United States. Over the years he acquired the rights to much of the East Texas Oil Fields—one of the world's largest oil deposits. His oil businesses, along with his other ventures made him one of the world’s richest men.