Hall, James, 1744-1826

James Hall was born in Carlisle, Pa., graduated from Princeton in 1774, and went to North Carolina in 1778 as a Presbyterian missionary. During the Revolutionary War, he organized a cavalry company for a raid into South Carolina, serving as both its chaplain and commander. He later participated in the Cherokee War. In the autumn of 1800, Hall went to Mississippi under a commission from the Presbyterian General Assembly and established a mission at Natchez, which was the first of the Protestant missionary efforts in the lower Mississippi Valley. He wrote the first history of Mississippi entitled "A Brief History of the Mississippi Territory" in 1801. Hall later became a prominent clergyman and educator in North Carolina.