Monthly Archives: June 2009

Samuel Hall Headstone Revealed

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I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I had to make a trip to Raynham, Massachusetts to view the Hall headstones in the Pleasant Street Cemetery, originally the Town Cemetery at Raynham Center, myself.  I’d been wanting to go over there for the last two years, ever since we had learned through DNA testing that we were descendants of Edward Hall of Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  Our Samuel Hall, son of Edward Hall, the immigrant ancestor, had lived in that part of Taunton, Massachusetts that became Raynham in 1731.  He is buried in the town cemetery in Raynham Center, along with many of his descendants.  It was his headstone that I was driven to see before any more time went by.  But would I be able to read any of the 1700 headstones, particularly the headstone of Samuel Hall?  His son, Jonathan Hall, Sr., in 1737, deeded 1 acre, 8 rods of land to the town of Raynham for a burying place for the inhabitants of Raynham.  That 1 acre, 8 rods of land made up the original part of the current Pleasant Street Cemetery and without question, included the Hall family burying ground.

I had two days to learn as much as I could about the Hall burials in Pleasant Street Cemetery.  The first day, it rained.  I walked through the cemetery in the rain reading and recording as many headstones as I could.  I found Samuel’s headstone but reading a headstone that was dirty from 292 years of being exposed to the elements, and wet on top of that, proved to be impossible.  The following day was to be sunny and warm; perhaps it would be easier to read!

The following day I was back to the cemetery fairly early.  As I am standing there getting my bearings on what to do first, I noticed a man walking toward me.  He comes up to me and asks who I am looking for.  I told him the Hall burials in the old section but in particular I am trying to read the inscription on the Samuel Hall headstone.  He says give me a minute to get my kit and we’ll find out what is on it.  I couldn’t believe it!  Mr. Bousquin spent nearly 3 hours working on Sam’s headstone cleaning it and chalking it so that we could read the inscription.  I will be forever grateful to Mr. Bousquin for his kind assistance so that I can now put this one to rest.

I can now say, without a doubt, that the Samuel Hall headstone is inscribed:

samuel-hall-1716-blog1
(Click on the photo to view larger image)

Here Lyes the body
of Samuel
Hall who Dyed
In Y[e] 60 Year of
his age August
30 1716
1716

samuel-hall-1716_invert_blog3
(Click on the photo to view larger image)

I am also grateful to my friend, Johnna Armstrong, for quickly thinking to invert the image, so that there are two different ways to look at the photo. The inverted image helps to bring out some letters (or placement) that are faint in the original image.

Esther Hall, wife of Edward Hall

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Esther Hall will most likely forever remain a mystery.  We have not been able to discover any documentation that gives her maiden name, birth or death dates, where she was born or where she died and is buried; nor the names of her parents.  No marriage records exists in those early records that are available.

I recently read a small book on early Duxbury.  The author made the comment that the search for love did not seem to travel far as most men in the Plymouth Colony married the daughters of their neighbors.  Is it possible that Esther’s family was of Plymouth Colony and a near neighbor of Edward Hall?  But then we have the fact that Edward, for no apparent reason that can be found, leaves Plymouth Colony for Braintree and remains there for about 5 years, where his first two children are born and recorded in the Braintree Vital Records.  I suspect that Esther was considerably younger than Edward and base this only on the fact that their last child, Benjamin, was born in 1668 when Edward was about 57 years of age.  Could it be possible that Esther’s family was of Braintree and that Edward and Esther lived with them the first few years of their marriage so that a very young wife might have the assistance of her mother as she bore her first two children?  We’ll probably never know the answers to these questions.

The only documentation on Esther Hall or the Widow Hall in Rehoboth follows.  There is no way to know for sure if the first entry from PCR pertains to Esther.

  • October 7, 1651, Grand Enquest presented Samuel Eaton and Goodwife Halle, of the towne of Duxborrow, for mixed dansing. Released with admonition (PCR 2:174).
  • Widow Hall appears on the earliest extant tax list in the town of Rehoboth, 1671 (Early Rehoboth, Vol. 1, by Bowen, p. 39).
  • Ester Hall is shown with one share of the Rehoboth North Purchase on 28 May 1672, Rehoboth town records (Early Rehoboth, p. 41).
  • Widow Hall appears on the Rehoboth 1674 tax list (Early Rehoboth, p. 16).

There are no further entries in the Rehoboth town records for either the Widow Hall or Esther Hall.

The Rehoboth Vital records contain the marriage of an Esther Hall to Thomas Jordan in Rehoboth on 24 December 1674.  There has been much speculation in published genealogies and histories that it was the Widow Esther Hall who married Thomas Jordan.  Other published genealogies and histories claim that it was Edward and Esther’s daughter, Esther, who married Thomas Jordan.  The only thing that is for certain is that there is absolutely no proof for either speculation.

The last document that mentions Esther Hall is a 1715 Quit Claim deed in which the siblings, Samuel, Thomas, Andrew, and Benjamin convey land in favor of their brothers, John and Preserved, described as:

…the lands which our father Edward Hall and our mother Esther Hall had in said Rehoboth in the Town of Attleborough in said county of Bristol….

The deed was recorded May 21, 1715 (Bristol Co. Deeds, 9:279-280).