John Marshall Hunter was born in Lennoxtown, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1881. He was married to Mary J. Taylor with whom he had at least one son, Joseph T. Hunter. After serving an apprenticeship as an architect with a Glasgow firm, he subsequently accepted an offer from the Canadian Pacific Railway. Later, as a member of a firm of Montreal architects specializing in church and home architecture, one of his first assignments was St. Dunstan's Basilica in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to replace the church which had recently been destroyed by fire in 1913. Following the five year project, Hunter elected to remain in Charlottetown and went into partnership with Charles B. Chappell.

The firm known as Chappell & Hunter, Architects, operated out of the Hughes Building on Queen Street. Together the two architects carried out many significant church and hospital architectural projects both in PEI and the mainland as well as designing and building residential, commercial and public buildings on the Island. These projects included the Rena MacLean Veterans hospital erected on the grounds of Government House, the new Charlottetown Hospital, Antigonish Hospital, an addition to St. Dunstan's University, and renovations to the Court House in Charlottetown, Falconwood Hospital, and the Prince County Hospital.

John Marshall Hunter died in 1942.