William Hall (governor)
William Hall (February 11, 1775 – October 7, 1856) was the seventh Governor of the state of Tennessee from April to October 1829.
[edit] Biography
Hall was a native of North Carolina but came to Tennessee while still a young man and became a prosperous farmer as well as a political leader. After serving in the Creek War, he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1797, serving there until 1805. He served as a brigadier general in the War of 1812. He was elected to the Tennessee State Senate in 1821, where he was later to serve as speaker.
As senate speaker Hall succeeded to the office of governor under the Tennessee state constitution when Sam Houston resigned the post. He did not stand for election as governor in his own right. He was the first governor of Tennessee ever to serve out the unexpired portion of a term to which another person had been elected, and served for a shorter period of time as governor of Tennessee than anyone else to serve in that position (if one discounts the supposed month-long governorship of E. H. East in early 1865, as the official Tennessee Blue Book does). An ally of Andrew Jackson, Hall later served in the U.S. House of Representatives for one term (1831–1833) (Twenty-second Congress) and then retired from public life, dying over two decades later on his farm "Locust Land" in Sumner County and being buried in the family cemetery there.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sam Houston |
Governor of Tennessee 1829 |
Succeeded by William Carroll |
| United States House of Representatives | ||
| Preceded by Robert Desha |
U.S. Representative for Tennessee's 5th Congressional District 1831-1833 |
Succeeded by John B. Forester |
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
