brigadier general, in the Virginia militia. After Virginia's legislature elected J.W. Tyler as circuit judge, Hunton was elected his successor as Commonwealth's attorney (local prosecutor) in 1848. Voters re-elected him twice, so he served from 1849–1861. In 1850, this Eppa Hunton, at age 30, owned 6 enslaved people: a 30 year old black female and five children (a 14 year old mulatto female, 5 and 10 year old black boys, and three year and 5 month old black girls). Hunton later described himself as a Democrat from his "earliest youth" like his father, and he was one of Virginia's delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 1856, and was a Breckenridge elector in 1860, later describing the multiple conventions that year that divided the Democratic party. Family life On 1848, Eppa Hunton married Lucy Caroline Weir (February 20, 1825 – September 4, 1899), daughter of Robert and Clara Boothe Weir. Her family could trace their ancestry to Judge Benjamin Waller of Williamsburg, and her father had been a successful merchant in Tappahannock before moving to Prince William County and running a plantation called "Hartford" until he died in 1840, leaving his widow with young children. During the April after Lucy's marriage to Eppa Hunton, Mrs. Weir and sold "Hartford" and moved with her daughters Betty and Martha to the new home Hunton had purchased in Brentsville. There she lived with the young family until Union soldiers destroyed the home in 1862. Mrs. Weir would continue to live with the Huntons until her death in Warrenville in 1870, and Martha until her death in 1882, although Bettie would move in with relatives in Clarke County after Lucy's death. The Huntons had two children: Elizabeth Boothe Hunton (June 20, 1853 – September 30, 1854) Eppa Hunton III (April 14, 1855 – March 5, 1932), who became his father's law partner, and went on to co-found the notable Richmond law firm Hunton & Williams in 1901. Considerably after the Civil War described below, Hunton's brother James died, and Eppa Hunton provided for his children, especially Bessie Marye Hunton (named after their mother), paying for her education and ultimately blessing her marriage. Civil War In February 1861, Prince William County voters elected Hunton, an avowed secessionist, as their delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention, as he handily defeated a Unionist candidate, Allen Howison. At the Convention Hunton made many contacts which proved important later