Greetings, you have found the least viewed blog on the internet! Do people even still read blogs? Ok, never mind you are here and that is what counts, literally. This is a blog broadly dedicated to my hobby genealogy and more specifically my genealogy. I naturally have a particular interest in my paternal Hall line but I will devote some attention to my other family branches. 

    So who were the Halls. The surname Hall is very common and has been independently adopted several times completely independent of each other. It is found in England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, and even Germany. My Halls come from the borderlands  along the English Scottish border and were once one of the sixty notorious reiving families that terrorized the borderlands from about 1200 to 1600 A.D. When England and Scotland were brought under unified rule of King James the I or the VI (depending on who you ask) the reiving era came to a violent end. the ruler of the now unified Island did not want a wide wath of his territory being a zone of lawlessness. James put an end to the reivers and many were given a stark choice, stop reiving, go somewhere else (Ireland or the colonies), or die. 

I do not know when my Halls left for the new world, all I can say is it happened before 1744 and maybe well before that. In fact the only reason I know my Halls come from the borderlands is Y-DNA results that link me to Halls from that region. What I do know is that we are now spread far and wide with some of us remaining in England, others in the USA or Canada and still more in Australia. The earliest record I have for my particular Hall line is a John Hall that sold some property in 1744 along the lower James River in what was then Henrico county Virginia. Before that all I have is speculation. 

    John might, just might have been the son of a John Hall Sr that died down in the Surry / Isle of Wight area of Virginia in 1716. However it is possible that my Halls were in Virginia much earlier. There is the interesting case of Thomas(ine) Hall, a rather unfortunate individual put on trial on April 8th 1629 in James Town Virginia for the crime of cross dressing. Thomas(ine) Hall was of indeterminate sex and even now we do not know for fact what her/his sex was. The important facts however are one, she/he came from Newcastle, only a 25 miles from the villages of Elsdon and Otterburn where my Halls originate from and two she/he had a unnamed brother that accompanied she/he to the new world. This brother might have had descendants that the John Hall that sold property in Henrico in 1744 might be descended from. All of this of course is wild speculation. 

From 1744 onward I have a clear picture all the way down to me. I suspect John was born around 1705 maybe in the Surry / Isle of Wight area. He married a women named Rebekah, last name unknown and had at least three sons, Nathan, Charles, and William. There might have been a fourth son named David and possibly an unknown number of daughters. To date I have found no evidence that either Charles or William ever had any children. David had several descendants but to date I have found not a single DNA match downstream from David. I and may others descend from Nathan. As a result as of now I have not one DNA match I can trace back to John Hall. The only evidence I have for him comes from documentation. 

    The primary documentation is I have John Hall's will which lists as witnesses, his son Nathan and grandson and my ancestor James. I believe Rebekah to be Nathan's mother as Nathan would name one of his daughter Rebekah. Another key piece of info I have is a land record from Chesterfield county signed by John Hall, Charles Hall and Nathan Hall on May 7th 1756. This same record gives us Nathan's wife's name of Susanna. Nathan would name one of his daughters Susanna.

    What I see during mid 1700s is the Hall moving eastward. First moving up the James river estuary and then going up the Appomattox river. As stated before, John sells some in what is called Jones Neck on the James River. The area is now under water and part of a nature preserve. We next find John selling land to his son Nathan on July 2, 1752 near One Hundred road and Swift creek. This is west of Chester VA. On Nov 2, 1753 John gifts land along Hundred Road to his other two sons Charles and William. Then there is the dowry release doc on May 7 1756 that mentioned John, Charles, Nathan and there wives in Chesterfield county. After this John kinda disappears from the records until his will on Aug 13, 1779 down in North Carolina where he is living on Nathan's land. John is resumed to have died on or around 1780 in Franklin county North Carolina. 

    Nathan next shows up on Feb 4 1758 witnessing the execution of Henry Ligon's will. Nathan was still in the area on Nov 12, 1759 as he was again called to witness the settling of Henry Ligon's affairs. On July 6 1761 Nathan applied for a land grant which was granted on Mar 01, 1762. At this point the Halls leave Virginia the the story shifts down to Franklin county Virginia. I have found no Halls in the area after this. Charles and William drop of the face of the Earth and David as said before is unconfirmed. 

    One thing I want to make clear at this point is that there were other Hall families in this area of Virginia at this time and they are better documented. It is tempted for decedents of my Halls to try and connect their trees to these other Halls. I want to warn against doing so.  There is an Instant Hall born 1673 in Charles City and and Issac Hall who died in the early 1700s down in Surry County. Both of these Hall families are Y-DNA haplogroup I-M253 and appears to be of Scandinavia origin. On the familytreeDNA Hall project they are grouped into family group 18. My Hall's (family group 19) on the other hand are part of what is called the little Scots cluster a sub group of R-M269, a completely different Y-DNA linage. If you descend from Nathan Hall you are going to be specifically haplotype R-FT128309, a sub group of R-M269 and not a descendant of either the aforementioned Instant Hall or Issac Hall. 

    So as I said the story now moves to North Carolina. Nathan and his wife Susana had several children. The eldest was Martin Hall, born sometime around 1751. Then William Hall around 1753. Then my ancestor James Hall born 1755. Solomon, born 1757. Then came what I theorized are two unknown daughters born about 1759 and 1761, their names lost to history. They are followed by Charles Hall born 1763, named after his uncle. Then Susanna Hall born about 1765, named after her mother. Rebekah Hall born about 1767, named after grandmother. Matthew Hall born 1769, likely named after close neighbor Matthew Strickland and finally John Hall named after grandfather born about 1771. I have some doubts about Susanna from a DNA stand point. I have several downstream matches that trace to her but it looks like the DNA is all from her father. It is possible although I consider it unlikely that she is in fact a niece and that either Charles or William are down there in North Carolina and one of them is the father. As for the other children I have found well over 100 confirmed DNA matched down Martin and Charles. A few that are suspected to trace back to Rebekah and more that trace to maybe John. The theoretical unnamed daughters were created to account for numerous DNA matches that seem to link back to Nathan. As of now I have zero DNA matches back to William, Solomon or Matthew. 

    I believe Nathan passed away sometime around 1786. The story now shifts to his son James Hall. I leave the continuation of this story to my next blog post. Hope you found this interesting.