William Phillips Hall

William Phillips Hall was a lay evangelist, railroad transportation executive, and electrical engineer. He founded Hall Signal Company and it was headquartered in New York City. He invented many railroad signal mechanisms that were safety devices. He was a businessman that was involved with many companies worldwide that were related to the railroad industry. He was just as well known for his philanthropic and religious work and participated in new reform and religious movements.

Hall Banjo style disc signals

William Phillip Hall
1896
Born(1864-02-01)February 1, 1864
Stamford, Connecticut
Died(1939-08-15)August 15, 1939
Wallingford, Connecticut
OccupationRailroad engineer
Known forinventor of railroad signals
Spouse(s)Charlotte Sophia Hollister
Childrenthirteen

Early life

Hall was the son of the railroad signal inventor Thomas Seavey Hall and his third wife Sarah Katherine (Phillips} Hall.[1] He was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on February 1 1864. He went to the local public schools and after graduating from high school this was supplemented by a college preparation course but he never entered college.[2]

Mid life and business career

Hall followed in his father's footsteps and invented many railroad signal mechanisms. He organized and founded in 1889,[3][4] when he was 25 years old, the Hall Signal Company that manufactured railroad automatic block signals as warning devices that two trains were on the same section of track.[5] Hall became president of the company he founded and it had offices in Chicago and London with the headquarters in New York City. Railroad traffic in the city of Chicago during the six months of the 1893 Columbian Exposition (Chicago's World Fair) was 19,500,000 passengers and there were no accidents under the protection of his signal system.[6]

Hall by the age of 47 was a director of several large corporations[7] including the New York Real Estate Security Company, Long Island Assembly, and the Continental Hall Signal Company of Brussels, Belgium.[8] He was also at the time a member of the American Railway Signal Association, American Railway Appliance Association, New York Board of Trade and Transportation, and the Board of Trade of Greenwich, Connecticut.[9]

Philanthropic and religious career

Hall's father was a preacher. His great-great-great parental grandfather John Hall, who was born in England and immigrated to America around 1645 was the earliest deacon of the First Church in Dover, New Hampshire. Reverend William Wirt Phillips, pastor for 40 years of the First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City was Hall's maternal grandfather.[3] Hall followed in their footsteps and became a lay preacher and religious writer as another career to his normal railroad associated businesses. He devoted much of his time and means to evangelistic, higher education, and philanthropic work.[1][10][11]

American League of the Grand Army of the Cross emblem.

Hall, a descendant of revolutionary heroes, organized in 1896 a new evangelistic movement and it was known as the American League of the Grand Army of the Cross.[12] The first branch of this new religious organization was unofficially developed in March and officially formed at Stamford on April 12.[13][14][15] The name was sometimes shortened to Army of the Cross. The goal was to reach 50% of the people that were not then associated with any other church.[16] It was structured like the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America although no uniforms were used.[17][18] Their was talk of joining forces with Ballington Booth, but that never came to fruition.[19] The leaders bore military titles like captains, generals, colonels, and lieutenants. The scheme of organization was to have a league company under the direction of a president captain and vice president lieutenant placed in every evangelical church. These companies were structured into regiments and brigades, commanded by president colonels and generals. Every regiment was expected to train and equip a brass band from its own individual membership. People from any denomination of any church were welcomed.[16] Its object was aggressive evangelism as an auxiliary force to regular church work.[17] Hall's organization proposed to work with all beliefs and did not intend to antagonize any sect, church, or belief.[13] The emblem of the organization was a sliver cross in red, white and blue and bearing letters A. L. G. A. C.[20] Each member of the new organization was expected to wear a pin or button in the shape of this Meltese style cross.[21] Hall's army was nonsectarian and all people were invited to join the organization, however those that did not belong to a church had to attach themselves to some religious organization within two months to become a soldier of the Grand Army of the Cross.[22]

The Rollins College in 1914

Hall was very involved with local communities and founded the Twentieth Century Gospel Campaign in 1900 and was chairman of its national central committee.[23] He was also then a member of the Lawyers' and Transportation clubs and the New England Society of New York and a member of the advisory committee of the General Communion on Evangelism of the Methodist Church.[9] By 1910 he was a member of the Bible League of North America; vice-president World's Christian Endeavor Union; manager of the American Bible Society, Methodist Episcopal Hospital, Brooklyn; president of the Evangelistic Commission, New York East Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church;[24] member of the Advisory Committee of the Commission on Evangelism, Methodist Episcopal Church.[6] By 1911 he was a trustee of the Rollins College of Winter Park, Florida;[25] trustee of the United Society Christian Endeavor, president of the American Bible Society,[26] and manager of Methodist Episcopal Hospital of Brooklyn.[9] He was also president of the American Bible league,[27] the American Tract Society,[28] the Biblical Seminary of New York and a vice-president of the World Christian Endeavor union.[29] He was also on the executive committee of the Greenwich library association for 1921 and 1922.[30]

Personal life

Hall was six feet tall of athlete build and a handsome face.[31] He married Charlotte Sophia Hollister, daughter of Elisha S and Adeline E Hollister of Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, on October 4, 1887. They had thirteen children. The ones that made it to adulthood were Dorothy K. Peddle, Mary P. Hirons, Charlotte H. Stockton, Margaret F. Moore, William Phillips, Charles Parker, Lyman Hollister, Melville Phillips, Theodore Dana, Thomas Shepard.[9] In 1904 Hall and his wife had eight children.[26] He was a follower of the Republican Party.[9]

Hall was an intimate friend of the evangelist, Dwight Moody,[4] and was influenced by him to some extent to became an evangelist himself and earned this label by which thousands knew him.[32] He was known as the business millionaire evangelist.[3][4][32] He was considered the richest evangelist in the world at the last part of the twentieth century.[33] After retirement, Hall devoted himself to writing Biblical stories and publishing religious material that he authored.[3][4][34] He died at the age of 73 on August 15, 1939,[32] and his wife had already died April 9, 1932.[35]

References
  1. Gibavic 1993, p. 74.
  2. Hamersly 1910, p. 769.
  3. HC8_16 1937, p. 4.
  4. RJ8_16 1937, p. 1.
  5. Herringshaw 1914, p. 461.
  6. Hamersly 1910, p. 770.
  7. MR4_3 1896, p. 7.
  8. Hamersly 1910, p. 670.
  9. Cutter 1912, p. 2063.
  10. NYT2_27 1901, p. 5.
  11. TAC1_22 1905, p. 4.
  12. TWE4_2 1896, p. 6.
  13. HAR3_28 1896, p. 4.
  14. TU4_25 1896, p. 3.
  15. TSU4_10 1896, p. 5.
  16. TWE4_2 1896, p. 4.
  17. GCS4_4 1896, p. 3.
  18. CT3_28 1896, p. 3.
  19. TBC3_28 1896, p. 1.
  20. TGDN4_1 1896, p. 4.
  21. LJS4_9 1896, p. 6.
  22. TOJ4_20 1896, p. 3.
  23. TPT12_24 1900, p. 1900.
  24. TBDE1_16 1904, p. 9.
  25. TTT3_2 1905, p. 7.
  26. VP12_23 1904, p. 6.
  27. TSLH7_11 1907, p. 1.
  28. TBDE2_24 1919, p. 20.
  29. CDT8_16 1937, p. 7.
  30. Mead 1922, p. 4.
  31. Leslie 1898, p. 115.
  32. TBDN8_16 1937, p. 1.
  33. TBM3_11 1898, p. 5.
  34. TSBT8_16 1937, p. 4.
  35. TCN4_12 1932, p. 6.

Sources
  • TSBT8_16 (August 16, 1937). "Millionaire Preacher Dies". The South Bend Tribune. South Bend, Indiana. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com .
  • TCN4_12 (April 12, 1932). "Wife of Founder of Hall Signal Company Dead". The Courier News. Bridgewater, New Jersey. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com .
  • LJS4_9 (April 9, 1896). "A New Army of the Lord". Lincoln Journal Star. Lincoln, Nebraska. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com .
  • Mead, Nelson B. (1922). The Greenwich Library report. Greenwich Library.
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