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Lyman Hall (April 12, 1724 ? Oct 19, 1790), was a signer of the USA Declaration of Independence as a representative of Georgia. Hall 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), was 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, he married again to Mary Osborne Hall. Soon they had a child, the last and only descendent of the Hall bloodline. Then 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 -- in Georgia, Dr. Hall accompanied them. He soon became one of the leading citizens of the newly founded town of Sunbury. John Trumbull's famous painting is usually incorrectly identified as a depiction of the signing of the Declaration. What the painting actually depicts is the five-man drafting committee presenting their work to the Congress. Trumbull's painting can also be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill.[1]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 Mar 1775, a seat that he held until 1780. He was one of the three Georgians to sign the Declaration of Independence. In Jan 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 Jan 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 , on the Carolina border, where he died on Oct 19, aged 67. Hall's widow, Mary Osborn, survived him, dying in Nov 1793. His one son, John, died shortly after and left no children of his own.
Michael
Grimes
