SARAH HALL.
Mrs. Sarah Hall was born at Philadelphia, on the 30th of October, 1761. She was the daughter of the Rev. John Ewing, D. D., who was, for many years, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Philadelphia.
At the close of the revolutionary war, in the year 1782, she was married to Mr. John Hall, the son of a wealthy planter in Maryland, to which State they removed. Here she spent about eight years, upon a beautiful farm on the shores of the Susquehanna.
After their residence in Maryland, they settled in Philadelphia, where Mr. Hall filled successively the offices of Secretary of the Land Office, and Marshal of the United States, for the district of Pennsylvania.
Endowed by nature with an ardent and lively imagination, she early imbibed a keen relish for the beauties of polite literature, and devoted much time to such pursuits. When the Port Folio was established by Mr. Dennie in 1800, she was one of the literary circle with which he associated, and to whose pens that work was indebted for its celebrity. Elegant literature was at that time more successfully cultivated in Philadelphia than in any other part of the Union. To write for the Port Folio was considered no small honour; and to be among the favoured correspondents of Mr. Dennie was a distinction of some value, where the competitors were so numerous, and so highly gifted; for among the writers for that work were a number of gentlemen, who have since filled the most exalted stations in the Federal government, both in the cabinet and on the bench, and who have, in various ways, reaped the highest rewards of patriotism and genius. Some of the most sprightly essays and pointed criticisms which appeared in this paper, at the time of its greatest popularity, were from the pen of Mrs. Hall.
When the Port Folio came under the direction of her son, the late
