Robert Franklin Bunting was born on May 9, 1828, in Hookstown, Pennsylvania, to John Bunting and Margaret Moody. He graduated from Washington College in 1849 before earning a master of arts degree from Princeton University. In 1852, he moved to Texas to become a Presbyterian minister. He married Nina Doxey in 1853. She died a few years later, and he married Chrissinda Craig in 1860. They had at least six children. Bunting served as minister of the First Presbyterian Church of San Antonio from 1856 to 1861. Bunting sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, serving as chaplain of Terry’s Texas Rangers. He also served as a war correspondent for two Texas newspapers and established a Confederate hospital in Auburn, Alabama. After the war, Bunting worked as Presbyterian minister across the South, leading churches in Nashville, Tennessee; Galveston, Texas; and Rome, Georgia. He died in Gallatin, Tennessee, on September 19, 1891.