08/24/2026
Video coming soon!
Imagine leaving Connecticut at 20 years old, traveling by ox-team into the wilderness, and building a life from nothing. That’s exactly what Joel Hall of Marion did.
On March 19, 1786, Joel was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, the son of Amasa and Dinah (Ives) Hall. Nearly two hundred years later, I had the opportunity to repair his headstone and, in doing so, learned the story of the man buried beneath it.
Joel came to what is now Wayne County, New York, in 1806. He was a young man leaving Connecticut and heading into a part of New York that was still heavily covered in forest. According to the history of the Hall family, Joel and his future wife, Anna Peck, blazed their trail north from Canandaigua.
They did not come with an easy journey ahead of them. They traveled by ox-cart, carrying their household belongings with them. These were the things that would become part of their new home and, generations later, would still be treasured by their descendants.
Joel and Anna were married on February 6, 1806. Anna had been born in New Haven, Vermont, and was only twenty years old when she and Joel began their life together.
After reaching what they believed was suitable land, surrounded by beech and maple trees, they stopped and began making a home for themselves in the wilderness. They were about two miles beyond the nearest human habitation.
The land they settled on consisted of 400 acres taken up from the government and was part of the old Phelps and Gorham Tract.
This would become Hall Center.
Joel's first home was a log cabin. Life on the frontier was certainly not easy. The family was surrounded by wilderness, and even wolves were common enough that Joel received a bounty for one killed on his farm. Deer were also so numerous and curious that they would sometimes come right up to the cabin and stick their heads through the open windows.
Joel was evidently a man who was not afraid of hard work. One old account describes him as a Puritan in religion and a God-fearing man, but it also says that he was naturally endowed with the strength of a giant and that stories of his feats of strength were almost marvelous.
A little settlement eventually began to grow around the Hall farm. There was an attempt to establish a hamlet with a store, post office, and blacksmith shop. Joel, however, preferred the simplicity of rural life and did not want to see the area develop into a larger community.
The settlement nevertheless became known as Hall Center, and Joel became known as its founder.
Joel and Anna also built a large family. Their children included Almira, William, Joseph, Lydia, Amasa, Orin, Levi, Enos, Joel Jr., Warren, and Ann. Orin, born in 1818, died young, but the rest of the family carried the Hall name into another generation.
Their little log cabin did not remain their home forever. Eventually, a substantial stone house was built on the Hall property. The stone was quarried right from the farm, and the house became the center of the family's life.
There is an interesting bit of family history concerning the house, too. An account in the Hall family history explains that Joel did not actually live in the later limestone mansion that people sometimes associate with Hall Center. His parents, Amasa and Dinah, built a fieldstone house around 1805, while Joel's own home stood nearby. Both generations of the family became closely connected with the settlement and the land.
The house witnessed nearly everything that happened to the Hall family.
There were births, weddings, family gatherings, celebrations, and eventually funerals.
One of the stories passed down through the family gives us a glimpse into what it was like inside that house during the winter. The family would gather around the fireplace in a semi-circle. Those sitting closest to the fire would have their faces burned from the heat, while those sitting farther away suffered from cold toes.
And then there was Anna.
Mrs. Warren Hall later remembered how her mother-in-law would trot back and forth from the pantry to the brick oven, baking scores of pies and dozens of loaves of bread to feed her ten hungry boys.
That old brick oven became one of Anna's favorite memories. Even late in her life, she still longed for some of the good things that had been baked in it. To her, they tasted better than anything that could be baked in a modern oven.
Joel's life was not without tragedy. His son William died at only 29 years old after being crushed by a stone while working to remove it from the highway.
Joel also lived through one of the most dangerous periods in the early history of the area. During the War of 1812, the British attacked Pultneyville, only about ten miles north of the Hall home. Joel left Anna and their four young children and went with his father to help repel the invasion.
The British did not remain long, and Joel eventually returned home to his family.
For the next several decades, Joel continued to live on the land he had helped turn from wilderness into a farm and community.
He had come to New York as a young man, traveling by ox-cart through the wilderness. He established a 400-acre farm, raised a large family, and became the namesake and founder of the settlement around him.
On January 26, 1865, Joel died at the age of 80.
Anna lived another seven years. She died on March 1, 1872, at the age of 86.
They were buried in the Hall Center Cemetery near their home, alongside many of their family members and neighbors.
Thank you to the The Marion Historic Association and Museum for providing me with this information.
