By Bill McEvoy
In honor of Memorial Day, local historian Bill McEvoy has compiled histories of some of the Civil War clergy who are buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. This is part 12 of 15.
Reverend Edward Henry Hall was born on April 16, 1831, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He died February 22, 1912, from pneumonia, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He attended High School in Providence, while his father was settled there as pastor of the First Congregational Church. He entered Harvard College in 1847, at age 16.
He graduated from Harvard with the class of 1851, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1855.
At the beginning of the Civil War, Hall was ordained at Plymouth, Mass., January 5, 1859, where he remained as minister over the Unitarian Church for eight years, until July 1867.
Reverend Hall enlisted, as a Chaplain, in Company S, 44th Regiment on September 12, 1862. He was discharged on June 18, 1863, when the Regiment was inactivated in Boston.
During his enlistment, his Regiment saw action at:
Battle of Rawal’s Mills, the Goldsboro Expedition, the objective bring to disrupt the Confederate supply line along the Wilmington and Weldon Railroads, Battles of Kinston and Goldsboro Bridge, and the Siege of Washington.
In late April 1863, the regiment moved to New Bern where, for the next two months, they participated in patrols and reconnaissance expeditions.
In 1869, at age 38, he became Pastor of the Second Parish (Unitarian), He remained there for 13 years.
In 1882, he became the pastor of the First Parrish Church at Harvard Square. He remained until his resignation was accepted in 1893.
He was a lecturer on the History of Christian Doctrine at the Harvard Divinity School for the year 1899-1900 and was given a doctorate. at Harvard in 1902.
Mr. Hall wrote the following books: Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Christian Church, (1874), Lessons in the Life of Saint Paul, (1885), Papias, and His Contemporaries (1899), Discourses, (1893), and Paul the Apostle, (1906).
He was a member of the 44th Massachusetts Regiment Association, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the U.S.A.
Find the gravesites of the Civil War Clergy by entering their name here: https://www.remembermyjourney.com/Search/Cemetery/325/Map Bill McEvoy can be reached at billmcev@aol.com