Sergeant Hall (1788–1848), printer, newspaper editor, and attorney, was born in Maryland and moved with his family to Philadelphia two years later. By 1801 they settled for about four years in Lamberton, New Jersey, before returning to Maryland. Hall probably learned the publishing trade from his eldest brother, John E. Hall, whose American Law Journal he printed in Baltimore in 1813. Two years later Sergeant Hall attempted to establish a Federalist newspaper, the Mount Holly New Jersey Gazette. Moving to Missouri Territory, he produced the Saint Louis Emigrant, 1817–18, and did job printing. By 1822 Hall opened a legal office at the Shawneetown Illinois Gazette printshop. He was supporting Henry Clay for president by 1824, when he tried to resume publishing his Saint Louis newspaper as the Emigrant, and General Advertiser. Hall issued the Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Miner’s Journal, 1828–29. He was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1833 and qualified to argue before the United States Supreme Court the following year. By 1837 Hall edited the Charlestown, Indiana, Indianian, and he died in Centerville in the same state (Randolph C. Randall, James Hall: Spokesman of the New West [1964], esp. 46, 122, 282; Proposals for Publishing in Mount Holly, The New Jersey Gazette [Mount Holly, 1815, broadside in PHi]; Brigham, American Newspapers description begins Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690–1820, 1947, 2 vols. description ends , 1:432; Shawneetown Illinois Gazette, 19 Jan., 1 June 1822; St. Louis Enquirer, 1 Mar. 1824; Philadelphia Aurora & Pennsylvania Gazette, 21 Apr. 1829; John Hill Martin, Martin’s Bench and Bar of Philadelphia [1883], 274; Washington Globe, 20 Feb. 1834; Indianapolis Indiana Journal, 3 June 1837).