Gilling, North Yorkshire

[zalib]

Hannah More set up 12 schools. She moved to Chew Magna from Yatton in 1800, and says the local rector spent a long time looking for premises for her school. It was after this she wrote her letter about Chew Magna and HALL. I think she must have known him for a year or so.

[zalib]

I've exhausted my search around Gilling, though enjoyed discovering so much about an area I had never looked at before and about the church. I hope some other researchers benefit from the data here. Having found out much more about John HALL of Chew Magna it does not help me one bit. I wanted to know why unrelated relatives of mine took so much stock in his services as a trustee, and they even met him. I now have an uneducated vicar with an army background who was used by several families in Chew and Frome for work around deeds and trusts. How does that happen?
I'll add one more bit of of information about the HALL family. Following the John HALL who probably came from Lincs., his son was Joseph who bough Skelton Castle, and testing the likely link to the MIDDLEMAY family of Essex, I found a Thomas HALL and a family link to Grantham before Lincolnshire. Among the papers that John HALL of Chew Magna left to his son was one entitled "Extracts from court rolls, Nottinghamshire and Rutland. 1432-1680." Why would he have that? Does this support the possibility that the Grantham history of the HALL family is correct!

[Geordie Mag]

Pity John Hall had such a common surname. He would have been a lot easier to track down if he'd had  a more unusual surname. I wonder if your family and others simply used him because he had links with so many influential people? Or perhaps he was known as a decent guy, who would do his best for you. Having been reading about the 18th century gentry, I realise that he could well have been educated at a local grammar school and most of them gave a decent education, so even though he hadn't been to university he could be quite well read.
The Lincolnshire references are intriguing.
One incidental link to the stories of the Halls and Lascelles families - the church in Durham to which they were linked, St Margaret's, was reported to be in a very poor state of repair in the 1st half of the 18th century. It was so bad that bits of plaster and stone kept falling onto the congregation during services and when it rained......!They may have been prosperous families, but repairing the church obviously wasn't at the top of their priorities.

[zalib]

A note about Thomas HALL, son of Joseph HALL and Catharine TROTTER.
Thomas' brother John, who changed his name to HALL-STEVENSON has a will (1785), and names Thomas, his brother, several times. One reference calls him Lieutenant-General Thomas HALL. The list of British Generals on Wikipedia names Thomas HALL as being promoted to General in 1796 and died in 1809.
Wikipedia references the Book of Dignitaries, Generals of the Army, and in appointments for May 8 1796 lists Thomas HALL, died 1809, age 84. That age matches his known baptism in 1725. I am going to assume that this is the father of John HALL, curate of Gilling and vicar of Chew Magna.
Unlike his brother George Lawson HALL who has a bit of history online, i am yet to find any other army records for Thomas HALL.

[Geordie Mag]

That's something of a breakthrough, isn't it? Still leaves the mystery of whom he married. I keep trying to track the marriage down, but dozens of Thomas Halls were getting married all over the country at about the right time, and the groom's occupation is rarely given. I wondered if the Nottinghamshire and Rutland court rolls might be linked to his wife's family, but that is impossible to check without her name.

[zalib]

The information on Thomas HALL has allowed me to find more of his army record. Historical Records of the British Army tells his history from 1760 when he was appointed lieut-colonel and deputy adjutant-general, moving between 35th foot, 74th foot, 3rd foot (1796).
The National Archives WO 17/200 has an item on 79th foot where Major-General Thomas HALL is mentioned. The 79th were formed as the 69th but renumbered on their way to India in 1758 and went to the Phillipines before being disbanded in 1763 after the seven year war. The 79th was reformed later and Thomas was the colonel, Major-General. I'd need to see the record to see if Thomas was part of that as it represents the first 6 years of John HALL's life. Later records put Thomas in America and Jamaica (1779) during the early 1780s when John was a curate and got married.
I don't know whether wives and family followed the troops around the world, but imagine Thomas' children were brought up without much support from the father, perhaps they were raised at Skelton Castle! Hannah More said, about John, 'he was raised in a military academy'.
Like you I've looked for HALL-CARTER marriages, there around 1755, there are none. The reformed 79th were called the Royal Liverpool Volunteers. They could have been in Ireland at one point.

[zalib]

It looks like I might be going back to square one or two. I found the will of General Thomas HALL of West Wratting in Cambridgeshire who owned a lot of property around West Colville. In the will he mentions wife Elizabeth, daughter Elizabeth, and son John. He mentions other property in Elwick, Durham, and Lancashire. His brother-in-law is John Carter POLLARD. Thomas married an unknown CARTER from Cambs. according to an online tree. The Elwick reference matches the will of John HALL-STEVENSON.
Most importantly, Thomas mentions Corbetta HALL, his niece, who must be the daughter of TH's brother George Lawson HALL and Corbetta MANNERS.
While daughter Elizabeth is shown marrying John MORSE (1776-1844) of Sprowston Hall and Bagthorpe in Norfolk, in 1800, son John HALL is not mentioned much in the will. A web search for HALL West Colville brings up John's history as the Squire, he died in 1860.
Elizabeth the daughter was born in 1775 I believe.
I'll have to do some more research for a John HALL, son of an army man as well as dig deeper into the CARTER side now I have the full name.

[Geordie Mag]

You've got a lot more information now. I need to read through it again to digest it. However, one link between what you have found now and the earlier stuff is Elwick (near Hartlepool).  Dorothy Lascelles, formerly Gibson, mother of the Revd Robert Lascelles of Gilling, refers in her will to her property at Bruntoft occupied by her brother. Well, Bruntoft is in Elwick parish, so could well be the same land. Though her sister, who married into the Hall family could well  also have had land there, but I haven't found a will for her.

[zalib]

Some dates: (British History Online - Weston Colville) Francis's son Thomas, created earl of Sussex in 1674, sold much land to pay his debts in 1708. Weston Colville was bought, probably in that year, by John Carter, a London linen-draper, who died in 1723, leaving it to his son John, who sometimes lived in the parish and died in 1759. His son and heir John after 1770 took the additional name of Pollard. He died in 1806, leaving no children. His sister Elizabeth had married Gen. Thomas Hall (d. 1809), whose son John (1767–1860) succeeded to Carter Pollard's estate.  From him it passed successively to his sons Gen. John Hall (1797–1872) and Maj. Charles Webb Hall (1802–80), and, neither son leaving issue, to his daughter Charlotte's son, William Henry Bullock, who succeeded to it in 1880, taking the name of Hall.