The Jackson Purchase region of Kentucky is comprised of the eight westernmost counties - Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Marshall and McCracken. It is bordered on the west by the Mississippi River, on the north by the Ohio River, on the east by the Tennessee River and the state of Tennessee to the south. By Kentuckians it is generally referred to simply as "the Purchase".

Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby purchased the land lying west of the Tennessee River from the Chickasaw tribe and opened the area for settlement around 1820. Within the next few years, my grandfather's ancestors came there from Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee - the Beadles, Clapps, Pryors and Wingos settled in Graves County with the Reeves and Halls in neighboring Ballard County.

Hall

The earliest known ancestor of the Hall family of Ballard County, Kentucky was William Hall who, according to the biographies of Charles Morgan Hall and David Hall published by Battle, Perrin & Kniffen in 1886, was a soldier of the revolution. A William Hall received a Kentucky land grant of 200 acres on Whipporwill Creek in Logan County but there is no other information available as to the date or even the military service although the grants in Logan County were military grants.

William Hall may have been the soldier of that name who enlisted in the 2nd Virginia State Regiment and served in Capt. James Quarles Company from 1778. William Hall was reported as sick at Valley Forge but continued to serve in the 2nd Virginia throughout 1779. This individual appears to have been deceased before Congress passed an act granting pensions to Revolutionary War soldiers for none of the William Halls who filed pension applications are found to have served in the 2nd Virginia Regiment.

By 1810, William Hall was probably deceased for in the census that year it appears that his son James was the head of a Butler County, Kentucky household which included most of his siblings, his mother, Abigail King Hall, and another unidentified female close to his mother in age.

During the years between 1810 and 1820, James Hall married Betsy Lovelace, Adam married Edith Ann Morgan and David married Susannah Morgan. Edy and Susannah Morgan were sisters, daughters of Revolutionary soldier Charles Morgan and Lourena Arnold. In the 1820 Ohio County, Kentucky census, James and Adam were recorded living in adjacent residences and an Abigail Hunter, over 45 years old with nine children some of whom may have been grandchildren, was living at the next residence. Although no marriage can be found, it appears that Abigail King Hall may have remarried to a Hunter individual who was also deceased by 1820. In this same neighborhood, living adjacent to the Hall families was Archibald Lovelace, probably a brother of Betsy Lovelace Hall, who had married Polly Morgan, another daughter of Charles Morgan, in Logan County in 1802.

After the Jackson Purchase was opened for settlement, all of these young families migrated there. David, James and Adam Hall had relocated to Hickman County by the 1830 census. The Archibald Lovelace family had also migrated to the Purchase and were counted in McCracken County in the 1830 census. In 1842, Ballard County was created from portions of Hickman and McCracken Counties.

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