Robert Bailey Hurt was born around 1821 in Halifax County, Virginia. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, around 1835, and he worked as a merchant there. He married Susan DeBerry on June 1, 1843, and they had at least five children: Absalom, born around 1844; Milton, born around 1846; Elizabeth, born around 1849; Rebecca, born around 1852; and Robert, born around 1858. He worked as a farmer in Madison County, Tennessee. By 1850, he owned $19,000 of real estate. A decade later, he owned $52,000 of real estate and $67,000 of personal property.

 

He supported the Whig Party, and he served in the state legislature in the late 1850s. According to one writer, he was “one of the strongest friends of internal improvements in the State.” In February 1860, he served as a delegate to the Opposition State Convention, which sought to “save the country from the disorganizing and revolutionary spirit of the times.” The delegates denounced the “continued agitation of the slavery question,” which “imperil[ed] the peace of the country [and] the stability of the Union.” As he later wrote, he never gave “aid or comfort to the disunion of these states, until after Hostilities commenced. After that time, I was enlisted in the cause of the south.”

 

In the fall of 1862, he served as a presidential elector, helping cast Tennessee’s votes for President Jefferson Davis. He also served as a major in the Quartermaster’s Department until July 1862. He applied for a presidential pardon after the war, and President Andrew Johnson granted his pardon in July 1865. By 1870, he owned $20,000 of real estate and $4,000 of personal property. Local voters elected him to the state legislature again in 1874. He suffered from cancer of the face, which claimed one of his eyes in 1876. He died in Madison County on August 31, 1881.

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