ABOUT
Home of Samuel Hall's master, Hugh Roddy Hall, his wife Mary Nesbit Hall, and their children. Hugh Hall taught at Ebenezer Academy, a preparatory school founded by his uncle, James Hall.
James Hall Adams, Sr. in front of Hugh and Mary Hall's home
An encounter with the family history that inspired this scholarship.
Samuel Samuel Hall was born and raised as a slave on the Hall plantation. As a young man, his master was Hugh Hall, an educator, who taught his slaves how to read and write. Following Hugh Hal's death, Samuel was sold to another enslaver in 1855 and taken to a plantation near the Tennessee-Mississippi line, separating him from his first wife and family. During the civil war, he secretly served in the Union Army. Near the end of the war and with the assistance of a squad of union soldiers, he freed his second family from slavery, and they moved to Washington, Iowa
At age 94, he decided to write a brief story of his life. In his book, Samuel Hall listed the names of his parents, siblings, half-siblings, wives, and children providing a rare record of an enslaved person's family. The book chronicles his life and experiences in slavery and afterwards. It gives an insight into what the life of a slave could be like. He chronicles his hardships and his struggles to overcome the many challenges he faced during his life.
The Hall plantation where Samuel Hall was enslaved until age 37 is near Freedom Presbyterian Church (where Samuel's brother, Ceasar, was a founding member). It has remained in the Hall family and is now owned by Hugh Hall's great-great-grandson, James Hall Adams, Jr., and his wife Rebekah.
In 2023, James' wife Becky, through her genealogical research, was able to connect with the descendants of Samuel Hall and his half-brother, Caesar (also enslaved on the Hall Plantation). Since the descendants did not know where Samuel Hall and his relatives had lived, James and Becky Adams invited them to a gathering at the farm in July 2023. See the video below of the descendants of Samuel Hall Gathering (credits to Javis Hough, videographer).”
Freedom Presbyterian Church, together with the descendants of Samuel Hall, his half-brother, Ceasar and the descendants of Hugh Roddy Hall, his enslaver, have established a scholarship in honor of Samuel Hall. Samuel Hall's half-brother, Ceasar Hall, was a founding member of Freedom Presbyterian Church.
The Samuel Hall Scholarship has been established to assist high school seniors in Iredell County to attend college and to assist those high school seniors that have ancestor(s) who lived on the Hall plantation to attend college regardless of where they live in the United States. It is the hope of those who established this scholarship to enable students to continue Samuel Hall's legacy of valuing education, hard work, and family. They also hope to encourage the study of African American history and the contributions that enslaved people made to Iredell County and North Carolina.