Author: Hall, William Seward
Biography:
HALL, William Seward (1754-1826: ancestry.com)
He was born in Southwark on 14 Sept. 1754 to Richard Hall (1729-1801), a hosier, and his first wife Eleanor Seward, an heiress. In 1766 Hall moved the prospering family business to new premises at 1 London Bridge, where they lived over the shop. He made his eldest child, William, a full partner in 1780. William was then able to marry Charlotte Glover on 13 Jan. 1785 at their local church, St. Magnus the Martyr; they had at least two sons, one of whom became a bookseller in Taunton, Somerset. For some years, Hall pursued his religious interests from the London Bridge address, for example lending his name to the Sunday School movement in 1786 and subscribing to Elhanan Winchester's The Process and Empire of Christ in 1793. In 1794, however, he resigned his share in the business to his younger brother Francis and became a silk merchant with an address in Bread St. As a member of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA), he submitted a design for a desk "to relieve the leaning posture while writing" in 1798. His affairs must have continued to flourish, for in 1820 he was made Master of his Livery Company (which should have been the Haberdashers' but appears to have been the Ironmongers')--only to be embroiled in a dispute over the honour of serving as the representative of his Company in 1821, the year of the coronation of George IV. His death was announced in Apr. 1826 and he is most probably the "William Hall," aged 73, who was buried at St. Bride, Fleet St., on Apr. 23. (ancestry.com 8 Jan. 2022; findmypast.com 8 Jan. 2022; Mike Rendell, "A Haberdasher's Shop on London Bridge," gresham.ac.uk 9 Jan. 2022; Hampshire Chronicle 17 Apr. 1826; John Nicholl, Some Account of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers [1866], 388-9; RSA archive RSA/PR/MC/101/10/1694) HJ