Dr. William Brenton Hall was the son of Brenton Hall, Esq., a respectable farmer of Meriden, and grandson of Rev. Samuel Hall, of Cheshire. Both places were societies of Wallingford at that time. Dr. Hall was born in 1764, and graduated at Yale College in 1786, and probably studied medicine in New Haven — perhaps while pursuing his college course. He commenced practice in Middletown in 1790. He married, in 1796, Mehitable, the sixth daughter of Major-General Samuel Holden Parsons, of Revolutionary fame. Dr. Hall made surgery a specialty, and had the most of that branch of practice. In August, 1796, he gained notoriety by his heroic professional conduct in attending the cases of yellow fever at Knowles Landing, or Middle Haddam. Dr. Tully, in his letter to Dr. Hosac, and in his work on fevers, gave the following account of that occurrence:
“The brig Polly arrived from Cape St. Nicholas Mole; on her homeward passage, one of her crew by the name of Tapper, died on board, of the yellow fever; the clothes which he wore while sick were thrown overboard, though a sail, on which he lay when he died, was retained.
“On the arrival of the brig at this landing, Hurd and Ranney were employed to assist in clearing her out. They were known to handle the sail on which Tupper died. At the same time Sarah Exton and Elizabeth Cook were employed in washing some of the sailors’ clothes. A few days after, these persons were attacked with yellow fever. In about five days Hurd died, and within twelve hours Ranney and Sarah Exton. The alarm in the village was already so great, that Sarah Exton was left alone in the night, and was found dead in the morning, with her infant child at her breast. The whole village was panic struck. After the three first deaths, Dr. Bradford, an old physician resident of the place, and Drs. Hollister and Thatcher, two young men, departed precipitately, and did not return until all traces of the disease had disappeared. About two hundred of their employers followed their example. Only five persons had firmness and humanity sufficient to remain to take care of the sick and bury the dead. The physicians who attended the latter cases were Dr. Wm. Brenton Hall, of Middletown, and Dr. John Richmond of a neighboring parish. From this single vessel there originated eleven cases of yellow fever in the town of Chatham, nine of which proved fatal.”
Dr. Hall was an active member of the Connecticut medical society, was treasurer of the State Society from 1799 to the year of his death; was elected Fellow from 1797 to 1809; was five years on the examining committee. He was largely engaged in teaching medicine. Dr. Osborn used to say he turned off doctors as fast as a rake-maker could rakes.
In 1792, the town of Wallingford voted permission to Dr. Hall to open a house of inoculation for smallpox on his father’s farm, in the northeast part of Meriden, near the Middletown line. Dr. Hall becoming bound to pay forty shillings or more for each case of smallpox in the town, spreading from the persons inoculated.
Dr. Hall was noted for hospitality; his house was a great center for the profession in the neighboring towns. His sideboard was especially free. On his last attempt to visit a patient he fell from his horse before leaving his yard; he was taken to his bed, which he was not after able to leave, and died in 1809, aged 45.
Dr. Hall built and occupied the house next south of the Mutual Assurance building, on the west side of Main street.
Source
Whittemore, Henry, History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, New York : J. B. Beers & Co., 1884.
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