William Hall of Hall's Delight

Major slave-owner in Jamaica. Died c. 1700.

1. William Hall of St Andrew, Esquire. Estate probated in Jamaica in 1700. Slave-ownership at probate: 82 of whom 49 were listed as male and 33 as female. 4 were listed as boys, girls or children. Total value of estate at probate: £6993.17 Jamaican currency of which £1888 currency was the value of enslaved people. Estate valuation included £0 currency cash, £3936.32 currency debts and £99.78 currency plate.

2. Sketch Pedigrees of some of the Early Settlers in Jamaica gives William Hall of Hall's Delight as the son of Edmund Hall of Greatford Hall, Lincolnshire, and his wife Anne, daughter of John Elmers Esquire of Swinford. He married Elizabeth Wyatt, daughter of William Wyatt and Elizabeth nee Heylin, in 1688. Their children were James (married to Elizabeth, died in November 1742), Frances (married Dr Richard Owen), Rachel (married Richard Basnett) and Anna Maria (married Eleazer Wignall).

3. "The Halls of Jamaica, were a reputed branch of the Halls of Greatford Hall, Lincolnshire, a family of great antiquity and high consideration, who were themselves a scion of the Fitz Williams of Clixby, of the same lineage as Earl Fitzwilliam. William Hall, Esq., born in Lincolnshire, youngest son of Edmund Hall, Esq., of Greatford Hall, by Anne his wife, daughter of John Elmers, Esq., of Swinford. He held first the appointment of British Consul at Bilboa in Spain, and subsequently, in 1687, accompanied to Jamaica, as secretary, Christopher Monk, Duke of Albemarle, Governor of the Island. He married, July 26, 1688, Elizabeth, daughter of William Wyatt, Esq. (lineally descended from the Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington Castle, the poet of the time of Henry VIII.), by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Councillor Edward Heylin; and left at his decease, Sept. 18, 1699, an only son, James Hall, Esq., of Hyde Hall, Jamaica .... who married Elizabeth, sister of Colonel John Cossley (Aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland at the battles of Fontenoy and Culloden). His second son, Cossley Hall, Esq., married, secondly, Elizabeth Bromley, eldest daughter of Thomas Rose, Esq., of Jamaica, and by her had Thomas James, his successor, and two daughters, the elder of whom, Anne Rose, married William Green, Esq., and secondly, J. Somerville Wood, Esq. By the former, this lady had an only daughter, Elizabeth, Countess Dowager of Harrington, and mother of the sixth Earl of Harrington."

1. Trevor Burnard, Database of Jamaican inventories, 1674-1784.

2. Noel B. Livingston, Sketch Pedigrees of some of the Early Settlers in Jamaica. Compiled from the Records of the Court of Chancery of the Island with a list of the inhabitants in 1670 and other matters relative to the early history of the same (1909) p. 78.

3. James Henry Lawrence-Archer, Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies (1875) p. 104.

We are grateful to Charlotte Hursey for her assistance with compiling this entry.