William Sims Hall, known as Sims Hall, one of several William S. Halls in the Republic of Texas, was a militia captain and a contractor for Stephen F. Austin’s army during the siege of Bexar. He may be the William S. Hall who, as a resident of Bolivar in 1826, served as captain of the Third Company of Lt. Col. Stephen F. Austin’s militia battalion. In May of that year he led his company under senior captain Aylett C. Buckner on a preemptive strike against the Wacos and Tawakonis threatening Austin’s colony. Hall drew a stinging rebuke from Austin, however, for impressing horses and arms from the poorest citizens of the colony to outfit his company and then failing to return that property to its owners at the end of the campaign.
On October 14, 1835, a William S. Hall, presumably the same man, was appointed an army contractor for the Gonzales region by the Consultation, and on October 27 Richard R. Royall informed Austin that Hall was “on the Guadaloupe Raising Beaves, and getting meal” for the Texas army besieging Bexar. On November 13 Hall arrived at Brazoria to retrieve the cannon lost in Matagorda Bay with the sinking of the Texas schooner San Felipe. He also forwarded a company of New Orleans Greys to Austin’s army at San Antonio and then on November 18 submitted his resignation to Austin. He assured the general, however, that he would be “proud and ready to execute any orders in [his] power and to give any pecuniary aid that [his] means will justify,” and left Brazoria on the same day in an effort to move the San Felipe cannon to Austin’s forces.
On February 20, 1837, a William S. Hall was appointed one of several overseers of roads for Brazoria County. This Hall apparently died before January 6, 1841, for on that date a runaway slave named Jim was apprehended and identified as belonging to the estate of William S. Hall, “late of Brazoria.” In 1845, however, a William S. Hall, perhaps the son of the Austin colonist, was awarded the contract for the mail route from the Brazoria County community of Columbia to Galveston, and in 1846 a William S. Hall enlisted at Brenham in Company F of Col. John C. Hays’s First Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, for service in the Mexican War. On July 11, 1846, he transferred to Company D of the same regiment, a unit composed primarily of Brazoria County volunteers.
Leave a Reply