| Notes |
- The following is directly from the book, HALLS OF NEW ENGLAND by Rev. David B. Hall, 1883:
James Hall, residence St. Dennis near Baltimore, MD; his wife dead in the autumn of 1829, leaving a son and a daughter, the son married and his wife dead at Nassau, West Indies, 1874, leaving two sons of eleven and nine years old.
After the death of his parents, James went to live with his sister, Mrs. Blake and at her death went to Peter Brown's of Stafford, a tanner and shoemaker, where his brother Benjamin was an apprentice and in 1810, at the marriage of his brother Jonathan
C, he went to live with him and remained four years, after which he studied at several schools to prepare for college and then went to live with his Uncle, Dr. Nathan Smith, whose first wife was Elizabeth, the daughter of General Jonathan and Thankful (Sherman) Chase.
Dr. Smith was a professor of surgery at Yale College, and James Hall lived with him three years and studied medicine while assisting him as steward at his house. Dr. Smith also gave lectures at Bowdoin College, ME, in which James Hall was his assistant and dissector and graduated there in 1822 and settled in the practice of medicine at Claremont, NH, where he married a Miss Sumner.
He afterwards removed to Windsor, VT and boarded in the family of Jonathan Hall whose son Israel married two of his nieces. He had a good practice in Windsor for two years, when in 1829, his left knee became affected with rheumatism and he had been under the necessity of using a crutch and a cane ever since. The following winter he spent in Cuba, West Indies, and having seen enough of slavery in Cuba, he spent the next two winters (those of 1830 and 1831), in Haiti.
From the next June to November, he was laid up in the Infirmary at Baltmore, MD when hearing that a vessel was about to sail for Liberia, Africa with emigrants. He applied for passage and was taken on a mattress in a carriage to the vessel, he then weighed 91 lbs., with boots and overcoat, etc. His three medical attandants gave their opinion of him as follows: Dr. Wright said, "Mr. Hall will never reach the Cape of Chesapeake;" Dr. Baker said, "he will not reach the coast of Africa;" but Dr. Smith who better understood Dr. Hall's will power said "he will arrive safely, but will fall with the coast fever." He arrived at Monrovia after a passage of thirty days and had gained a little over a pound a day; and during his stay of two years was able to do efficient professional work in the colony.
Soon after his return to America, June 1833, he was commissioned in the Maryland Colonization Society under the state patronage to found a new colony at Cape Palmas, having visited the cape the year previous and brought it to the notice of the public as a place favorable for such an enterprise. In November 1833, he set sail from Baltimore in the Brig Ann and was successful in purchasing the territory desired and in planting the colony or state, of which he remained in charge as governor until June 1836. He then chartered a vessel and traded on the coast for the next four years. In 1840, he accepted a general agency of the Maryland Colonization Society, having the main direction of ill affairs both in Africa and in this country, under a board of managers. The duties of this position, together with that of commercial agent of the American Colonization Society, he continued to discharge for twenty years, and until the breaking out of the Civil War in 1861, since which Maryland emigration had ceased and Dr. Hall had rendered only occasional service to the American Colonization Society.
While in Africa, Dr. Hall built a ship for a merchant citizen of Liberia, which bore his name (James Hall), and on the stern was carved a crutch and a hook cane as his coat of arms. He devoted nearly forty years of his life to the cause of African Colonization; not however as an advocate of any general deportation of the colored people of this country, but for the relief it afforded to the manumitted in the days of salvery and the colonization of Africa.
The following was taken directly out of a book entitled "Ancestry of a few of The Descendants of Edward Hall of Rehoboth, Mass., with intermarriages", author unknown:
"Dr. James Hall, who died at Claremont, Elkridge, on Saturday, in the 88th year of his age, was buried in his lot in Green Mount Cemetery in this city yesterday. The funeral services were held in Grace Protestant Episcopal Church, and a large
assemblage of friends and neighbors witnessed the last sad rites. It was the end of one of the most remarkable men that ever left this state for a career on another continent. It was Doctor Hall who did such wonderful work in Liberia."
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1802 - 1889 (87 years)
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