Descendants of John Hall ( -1817)
John Hall emigrated from Ireland in the wave of Scots-Irish immigrants who came to America in the late 1700s. In 1784, he was warranted a tract of land from Jacob Hill in western Plum Township (today’s Monroeville) along Thompson’s Run, and in the early 1800s he moved his growing family there. He was to name the family farm “Hall’s Industry,” and it remained a feature of Patton Township through several generations of Halls. In 1801, John Hall married Elizabeth Hyatt (1767-1849) and the couple were to have nine children, many of whom stayed on to work the farm.
In John Hall’s will he left “the plantation” of 305 acres to his wife Elizabeth (as well as “one horse and two calves, one bed and bedding, and one bureau”). She was to maintain the farm “in good repair” for a period of eight years, while allowing the children to live there without cost.
Elizabeth Hall apparently remained on the farm until her death in 1849. Elizabeth Hall is buried near the old church in the Cross Roads Cemetery in Monroeville, along with most of the early members of the family. The farm remained in the family for another hundred years, eventually passing down to various family members from 1876 to 1915. By 1895 James’ widow, Eva (Evaline) Hall, owned most of the farm.
With the development of coal mining east of Pittsburgh in the 1800s, mining tracks and later railroads began to appear in the Thompson Run valley. At one time an incline operated on the Hall property, up the hillside, across the valley floor near where the Northern Pike crossed Thompson Run. And J.O. Hall was to become a well-known coal mining owner and operator, with his company headquartered in East Pittsburgh.
When the mines came to the area, the railroads were soon to follow, laying tracks to service the mines and feed the growing steel industry of Pittsburgh. And in the early 1900s, when the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad extended its tracks through to the Pittsburgh mills, it acquired a right-of-way through the Hall farm, and named the local depot “Halls Station.” Today the Union Railroad’s maintenance yard and roundhouse facilities are called the “Hall Locomotive Shops,” after this pioneering family.
Several Hall descendants remain in and around the Monroeville area, and many more reside in the greater Pittsburgh region.
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Source: Ritz, Gene, Hall Family Notes, May 2010. Archives of the Monroeville Historical Society.