Hall, Lyman (1731–1790).
Lyman Hall, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Connecticut in 1731, graduated A. B. from Yale in 1747 and studied medicine with a local physician. He married in 1752 and accompanied by several families, removed to South Carolina. After a brief agricultural experiment with uncertain results, the families with which he came from the North, moved with him to Sunbury, a small village near the coast of Georgia, south of Savannah. He made a good living as a country practitioner and with the beginning of the revolution espoused its cause. Being blessed with the art of oratory to an unusual degree, he spoke far and wide and succeeded in persuading his neighbors to elect him a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775. This early patriotic action of St. John's Parish at a time when there was opposition in Georgia to the articles and declaration of the General Congress led later to an act of the legislature, creating St. John, St. Andrew and St. James parishes, "Liberty County." Until Georgia was fully represented in the Congress Dr. Hall declined to vote upon questions which were to be decided by vote of the colonies, but he participated in the debates and recorded his opinions. When it came to the signing of the Declaration on the part of the State, Dr. Hall presented credentials, May 20, 1776, and early in June signed for the State of Georgia, with two others. He was elected a member of Congress for three successive terms and then declined another nomination.
When the British captured the forts in Savannah, the property of Dr. Hall was confiscated and he spent a year in the North with his relatives in Connecticut. On his return he settled in another part of Georgia, in Burke County, and practised there until he was elected Governor in 1783, and died while still in practice, October 19, 1790. Hall County in northern Georgia was subsequently named for him.
An olden-time biographer says of him: "He was six feet high, with easy and polite manners and deportment."