Biography

Henry Gerard Hall (1833-1873) was born on January 7, 1833, in South Carolina, to William and Nancy Cannon Hall. He was one of eleven children (three boys, eight girls). By the late 1830s, several of his uncles migrated westward, settling in the then no-man’s-land of east Texas, in the Shelbyville area. In 1840, the uncles became embroiled in the Regulator-Moderator Wars, which lasted until 1845. That involvement cost two uncles their lives. His family reached the area in 1841, with his father becoming an influential figure in Shelbyville.

After earning a degree in law at Princeton University, Hall was admitted to the Texas bar in 1854, and five years later married Eugenia F. Cooke. They had five children, but only three, Hally, Henry Jr., and Ruby reached adulthood.

Henry attained the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Civil War, fighting in the Battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, and Jenkin’s Ferry, Arkansas, with the 28th Texas Calvary. After the war, he moved to Shreveport as a practicing lawyer. As a result of the 1872 State elections, Henry was appointed Caddo Parish Judge by Governor William Pitt Kellogg. On January 1, 1870, he began a personal journal, recording happenings in the city and in his private life until the yellow fever epidemic of 1873, in which he and his wife died. Their children were raised by family members.

Both Henry and Eugenia are buried in the Dr. Austin Lamar Cooke plot, Oakland Cemetery in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Source: Stephen R. Smith, "Hall, Henry Gerard" Handbook of North Louisiana Online (http://nwla-archives.org/handbook/hallHenryGerard.htm), accessed 2019 May 15. Published by LSU-Shreveport.

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