Lyman Hall
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Lyman Hall (April 12, 1724 – October 19, 1790), was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Georgia. Hall County is named for him.
Born in Wallingford, Connecticut on April 12, 1724, he was the son of John Hall and Mary Street. In an era when kinship mattered, he was well connected: his paternal grandfather, Hon. John Hall (1670-1730), a member of the Governor's Council and a Justice of the colony's supreme court. His maternal grandfather was Rev. Samuel Street (Harvard 1664), Wallingford's first pastor. The town of Wallingford has honored Lyman Hall by naming one of its two high schools after its distinguished native son.
Hall graduated from Yale College in 1747 and studied theology with his uncle, Rev Samuel Hall (1695-1776; Yale 1716) in Cheshire, CT. In 1749, he was called to the pulpit of Stratfield Parish (now Bridgeport, CT). His pastorate was a stormy one: an outspoken group of parishioners opposed his ordination; in 1751, he was dismissed after charges against his moral character which, according to one biography, "were supported by proof and also by his own confession." He continued to preach for two more years, filling vacant pulpits, while he studied medicine and taught school.
In 1752, he married Abigail Burr of Fairfield, who died the following year. In 1757, having married again, he migrated to South Carolina and established himself as a physician at Dorchester, South Carolina, near Charleston, a community settled by Congregationalist migrants from Dorchester, Massachusetts decades earlier. When these settlers moved to the Midway District -- now Liberty County -- in Georgia, Dr. Hall accompanied them. He soon became one of the leading citizens of the newly founded town of Sunbury.
On the eve of the Revolution, St. John's Parish, in which Sunbury was located, was a hotbed of radical sentiment, where the rest of the young colony was mostly loyalist in its sympathies. Though Georgia was not initially represented in the Continental Congress, through Hall's influence, the parish was persuaded to send a delegate -- Hall himself -- to Philadelphia. He was admitted to a seat in Congress in March 1775, a seat that he held until 1780. He was one of the three Georgians to sign the Declaration of Independence.
In January of 1779, Sunbury was burned by the British. Hall's family fled to the North, where they remained until the British evacuation in 1782. Hall then returned to Georgia, settling in Savannah. In January 1783, he was elected an early governor of the state -- a position that he held for one year. While governor, Hall advocated the chartering of a state university, believing that education, particularly religious education, would result in a more virtuous citizenry. His efforts led to the chartering of the University of Georgia in 1785. At the expiration of his term as governor, he resumed his medical practice.
In 1790, Hall removed to a plantation in Burke County, on the Carolina border, where he died on October 19, aged 67.
Hall's widow, Mary Osborn, survived him, dying in November 1793. His one son, John, died shortly after and left no children of his own. A collateral descendant, Lyman Hall, was the second president of Georgia Tech.
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References
- Franklin B. Dexter. 1896. "Lyman Hall." In BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE GRADUATES OF YALE COLLEGE, 1745-1763. New York: Henry Holt & Company.
- Charles S. Hall. 1896. HALL ANCESTRY. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
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