Location: NC 158 (Macon Street) at Hall Street in Warrenton
County: Warren
Original Date Cast: 1985
Judge John Hall was a native of Staunton, Virginia, and was educated at the College of William and Mary. He came to Warrenton while a young man to practice law. Hall married Mary Weldon and they had ten children. He was a Mason and held several positions within the Johnston-Caswell Lodge as well as serving as sixth Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina. Hall was by faith a Presbyterian but several years before his death he became a communicant of the Episcopal Church to which his wife and children belonged.
In 1800 Hall became a Superior Court judge, a position he held until the North Carolina Supreme Court was organized in 1818. The other original members of that bench were Leonard Henderson and John L. Taylor, the Chief Justice. Hall remained on the bench until ill health forced his retirement in 1832. He died the next year and was buried, together with other family members, in a plot near their house. The house in recent years has been demolished but the cemetery plot remains near Hall Spring shopping center.
References:
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, III, 11—sketch by Elizabeth W. Manning
Samuel A. Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina, V, 117-120
Nocalore, VIII (1938), 50-56
(Raleigh) State Chronicle, October 30, 1885
(Warrenton) Warren Record, July 30, 1986