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).