Benoni Hall (1710–September 16, 1779) was a Rhode Island surveyor who served as a justice of the Colonial
Rhode Island Supreme Court
The Rhode Island Supreme Court is the court of last resort in the U.S. State of Rhode Island. The Court consists of a Chief Justice and four Associate Justices, all selected by the Governor of Rhode Island from candidates vetted by the Judicial No ...
from May 1765 to May 1768, and again from June 1769 to May 1773.
In March 1732, he married Elizabeth Gardiner. When the town of
Exeter, Rhode Island
Exeter is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States. Exeter extends east from the Connecticut border to the town of North Kingstown. It is bordered to the north by West Greenwich and East Greenwich, and to the south by Hopkinton, ...
was established in March 1742, Hall was chosen as its first town clerk.
In July 1758, Rhode Island provincial records show that Hall had reported that his son Henry had been taken prisoner in French Louisiana, and that Hall sought to arrange a prisoner exchange to obtain the release of his son and other British subjects; this proposal was approved by the General Assembly.
Among the cases over which Hall presided while serving on the Supreme Court was that of David Hill of Wrentham, a merchant whose property had been seized in New York, and who sued those responsible against their own property in Rhode Island. Hill's cause was unpopular, but in 1771 the court of appeals and the supreme court both upheld an award for Hill, and members of the supreme court, including Hall, were nonetheless reelected by the legislature the following term.
[George Washington Greene, ''A Short History of Rhode Island'' (1877), p. 206.]
References
1710 births
1779 deaths
American surveyors
Justices of the Rhode Island Supreme Court
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