Hunter was born in Sheffield on 6 February 1783 to cutler Michael Hunter (1759—1831) and Elizabeth Girdler (1761—1787) in a house on the north side of New Church Street (a site now occupied by the Town Hall). Following the death of his mother in 1787 he was placed under the guardianship of Joseph Evans, a minister at Upper Chapel. He went to school in Attercliffe and then studied theology at Manchester College in York. In 1809 he moved to Bath to take up a post as a Unitarian Minister at Trim Street Chapel, there he met and married Mary Hayward, with whom he would have six children., one of whom, Sylvester Joseph Hunter, converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit priest. In 1833 he moved to London to work at the Records Commission as Assistant Keeper of Public Records. He died in 1861 and is buried at Ecclesfield Parish Church in Sheffield.