Elizabeth Hall

Biography

Elizabeth Hall married George Babcock on November 28, 1694. The family genealogy identifies her parents as Henry and Content Hall and records eight children in her marriage. Her own religious membership is dated precisely: she joined the Seventh Day Baptist congregation associated with Newport and Westerly, Rhode Island, on July 20, 1707, shortly after George’s baptism.

Elizabeth lived through the family’s establishment in the historical Kingstown area of southern Rhode Island, the raising of their children, and George’s years of landholding and public service. A more direct view of her place in the household comes from his will of 1750. It made provision for her widowhood and assigned to her an enslaved woman named Peg. The document records George’s intended bequest; it does not explain Peg’s earlier life, Elizabeth’s subsequent dealings with her, or whether the provision was executed exactly as written.

George died in May 1756. Elizabeth survived him for six years. Stephen Babcock’s genealogy reproduces a notice from the Boston Evening Post of May 24, 1762 reporting her death on May 8, in her ninety-first year. The notice counted her large family and its descendants, giving her death an unusually visible place in the newspaper record. Her church entry, provision in her husband’s will and reported death notice provide three distinct glimpses of a life extending from seventeenth-century Rhode Island into the 1760s.

The burial listing associates Elizabeth Hall with George Babcock Lot, South Kingstown, Washington County, Rhode Island, United States.