Reinette Long Hunt
17 December 1873 – 30 October 1940
Reinette Long Hunt was the daughter of Richard Call Long and Cora Gamble Long, and granddaughter of Ellen Call Long. She spent most of her youth at The Grove, briefly going north for schooling, helping her grandmother Ellen Call Long to care for house and with her silk-making. She married Charles Edwin Hunt at the age of twenty-four, briefly living with him in New York before returning to The Grove in 1903. Due to financial problems, The Grove had been forced to foreclose, and Charles Hunt purchased The Grove and gave the titled to Reinette against Ellen’s wishes. This would continue to impact Reinette’s relationship with the family after Ellen died in 1905.[1]
Reinette and Charles did not have children, and they divorced in 1911 due to Charles physical and emotional abuse and abandonment of Reinette, leaving Reinette to support herself financially.[2] She began to provide various art and literature lessons, having picked up the interest while away at school. She also became a published writer like her grandmother and father, publishing the Historical Pageant of Tallahassee and several other works.[3] By the 1920s, Reinette began to rent out rooms in the Call-Collins house much like her grandmother had, but this time turning her family home into a hotel.[4] Unfortunately, the Great Depression took both a financial and physical toll on Reinette, and while she struggled to procure funds to preserve The Grove and keep it under her ownership, she fell ill and died in October of 1940. She is buried next to her mother and grandmother.[5] According to notes on a hand-drawn map made by Anthony Jensen in 1967, Reinette had her dog and “constant companion,” – a small white poodle named Buster – buried next to her in the cemetery.[6]
