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HALL, WARREN D. C. (1788-1867). Warren D. C. Hall, early settler, was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, in 1788. After studying law in his home state he moved to Louisiana, where in 1812 he opened a law office in Natchitoches. That year he joined the Mexican Republican Army of the North, under José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and Augustus W. Magee.qqv He was elected a captain in the Gutiérrez-Magee expeditionqv and participated in the opening engagements, including the battle of Rosilloqv in 1813. He resigned his command and returned to Louisiana in protest against the butchery of royalist prisoners, reportedly ordered by Gutiérrez, at Alazán Heights. In 1817 Hall accompanied the expedition of Francisco Xavier Minaqv to Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, and returned to the Texas coast with Gen. Louis Michel Aury.qv Though he allegedly befriended Jean Laffiteqv on Galveston Island, Hall took no part in the buccaneer's sometimes questionable activities. In November 1828 Hall and his wife, Julietta, a native of New York, settled near Columbia in Brazoria County. After taking an oath of allegiance to the Mexican government on December 21, 1829, Hall quickly became active in colonial affairs. In 1832 he participated in the battle of Velascoqv and was second in command of the Texans at Anahuac in the movement against John Davis Bradburn'sqv repressive measures (see ANAHUAC DISTURBANCES). In October he attended the Convention of 1832qv at San Felipe as a delegate from Liberty Municipality. Affairs were for a time quiet, and Hall retired to his farm, where his only child, Julia, was born in 1833. He was among the charter members of the first Masonic lodge in Texas, organized at Brazoria by John A. Whartonqv in 1834, and helped train William T. Austinqv for a duel with Wharton that year. In 1835 Hall was made a member of the committee of safety at Columbia, and in November represented Columbia at the Consultation.qv After the revolution broke out he was able to advance Stephen F. Austinqv $500 in an 1835 campaign for "expresses, spies, corn, beeves, etc." Hall was appointed adjutant general by David G. Burnetqv early in 1836 and later acted as secretary of war of the Republic of Texasqv while Thomas J. Ruskqv was with the army. Hall held the rank of colonel and commanded the post at Velasco until May 26, after independence had been won at San Jacinto. He again served the republic in September 1842, when he joined the forces that expelled Adrián Woll.qv After 1836 Hall practiced law in Brazoria County for several years and served three years (1843-46) as justice of the peace. He established China Grove Plantation, fourteen miles south of Houston, and raised sugar. In 1843, after the death of his wife, he sold China Grove to Albert Sidney Johnston,qv who occupied the plantation until his move to Austin in 1849. Hall married Mary A. Moore on May 23, 1843. During the 1850s he surveyed and speculated in choice bottomland near Genoa, in Harris County, and helped build and finance the Columbus Tap Railroad. The story that he and his faithful black slave, Old Tom, once single-handedly fought off a gang of Mexicans intent on killing him has taken its place in Texas legend. Hall spent his last years at his plantation Three Trees, where he maintained a ferry to Velasco and died in 1867. Hall County, organized in 1876, was named in his honor. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Virginia Browder, Hall County Heritage Trails, 1890-1980 (2 vols., Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1982, 1983). Zachary T. Fulmore, History and Geography of Texas As Told in County Names (Austin: Steck, 1915; facsimile, 1935). Texas House of Representatives, Biographical Directory of the Texan Conventions and Congresses, 1832-1845 (Austin: Book Exchange, 1941). Jesse A. Ziegler, Wave of the Gulf (San Antonio: Naylor, 1938).
H. Allen Anderson
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