New England Hall Family Research
The Hall Surname is one of the largest. In addition to many immigrants to America from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, etc., many immigrants from other countries have shortened or Anglicized their surname to Hall. This has made doing family research into the Hall family very challenging.
This research website is not trying to address all Halls who have come to America. Our focus is on documenting the Hall families who came to America during the colonial period and initially settled in New England.
The first attempt that I am aware of to study these Hall families was the massive work published in 1883 by Rev. David B. Hall, called "Halls of New England". This 800+ page work was a massive undertaking at the time, considering what source materials Rev. Hall had. But he did have one source then that we do not have today. That source was the memories, often imperfect, of descendants for whom the stories of their ancestors were mere generations removed.
This website is part of an effort to take Rev. Hall's efforts and bring them up to date, filling in gaps that he missed and correcting several of his errors. In the process, providing a reliable research site for anyone researching the New England Hall research.
This site is a complement to an active Facebook Study group "Hall Families of New England", and an associated blog where articles relating to this research are preserved.
Major Update for August 28th 2019
A major update was uploaded for the Halls of New England Master File. This update includes thousands of corrections and minor updates including updates to badges and groups along with about 2000 new people. The people include not only the existing lineages, but also several lineages from the previously unrepresented New England Hall families have been added. To see what has been added, please review the What's New page.
We have begun creating reports from the master file to highlight various aspects of the genealogy. Existing reports include Famous People, Revolutionary War Veterans, Mayflower Passengers, Immigrant Heads of New England Hall families. I want to focus your attention on our Brick Wall Halls - these are the Halls that we have not yet identified their ancestry, and we believe it to be in one of the known New England Hall families. We expect to be adding additional reports soon. We would like your help identifying anyone on this genealogy who served in either the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, World War I, or World War II so that we can recognize their service.
Minor Update for October 16th 2019
A minor update was uploaded for the Halls of New England Master File. This update includes corrections and minor updates including updates to badges and groups along with about 100s of new people. The added people are primarily extensions of existing lineages that have been submitted by site visitors. Another serious correction to the Halls of New England record has been made in the Halls of Yarmouth lineage.
Major Update for November 22nd 2020
A major update was uploaded for the Halls of New England Master File after a somewhat long hiatus. This update includes updates throughout the various families with a special interest in Hall - Mayflower genealogies.
Update for November 28th 2020
A minor update to the genealogy was made that included corrections and some new family lines. The more important update was to the underlying TNG software where we are now at version 13.0.1. We will have some further tweaks shortly. Some updates to the home page have been made.
6 October 2022 - Major Update.
Several minor updates since last notice, but this update has added dozens of new lineages along with updates to many existing lineages. It would be worthwhile to review any lineages you are interested in to see what updates have been made. I have begun to switch over the badges and groups to the lineage society style: i.e., only blood descendants of New England Halls will get a group designation and badge - spouses and parents of spouses will no longer be so designated. This is a change in process and will be completed over next several updates.
To see what has been added, please review the What's New page.