Edward Payson Hall was born on July 27, 1842, in Groton, New Hampshire, to Otis C. Hall and Lucy Ann Cummings. His father was a postmaster and merchant who owned $800 of real estate and $1,000 of personal property in 1860. Hall grew up and attended school in Groton before beginning work as a farmer. He enlisted in the Union army on September 2, 1861, and mustered in as a private in Company I of the 4^th New Hampshire Infantry on September 18.

 

The regiment took part in the Battle of Port Royal, the Bermuda Hundred campaign, the Battle of Cold Harbor, the siege of Petersburg, and the Carolinas campaign. He was eventually promoted to corporal and then sergeant. He mustered out on August 23, 1865.

 

Hall returned to New Hampshire after the war, and he may have married a woman named Isabell soon afterward. By 1870, he was living in Victor, Iowa, and working as a railroad clerk. He owned $1,200 of real estate and $500 of personal property. Isabell may have died in the early 1870s, and Hall married Josephine A. Guild in Walpole, New Hampshire, on May 16, 1872.

 

She probably died soon afterward, and Hall married Laura Cushen around 1878. They had two children: Robert, born around 1881; and Chester, born around 1883. By 1880, Hall was serving as a justice of the peace in Victor. The family moved to Austin, Minnesota, sometime in the late 1800s, and Laura died there around 1903. By 1910, he was living in his son Robert’s household in Bloomfield, Iowa. Hall moved to Kansas in the early 1910s, and he married Sadie Seaton Wilson there around 1916. He died in Kansas on May 3, 1927.

 

Image: Edward Payson Hall (Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, available from Ancestry.com)

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