Richard HALL

HALL, RICHARD (b. Gloucestershire, England, 10 July 1826; d. Newcastle, NSW, 21 Dec 1903). Merchant and Primitive Methodist layman.

Richard Hall migrated to Newcastle in 1851 to work for the Australian Agricultural Company which he left in 1859 to start his own fruit and vegetable business. He later became a successful general merchant.

Hall joined the Primitive Methodist Church in 1849 in England and played a leading role in the foundation of the church in the Newcastle area. For 23 years a class meeting and a prayer meeting were held in his home and for 30 years he taught Sunday school (20 years superintendent). He gave generously to the church and was at some time a member of most connexional committees, later (1887) becoming vice-president of the Primitive Methodist Conference, the first layman to hold that position.

He was a long-standing member of the committees of the Newcastle Hospital and the BFBS, and a founder of the Coutts Sailors' Home. He was for 10 years an alderman of the Newcastle Council and frequently arbitrated coal-mining disputes in the area. He was a man of broad sympathies, kindly disposition, and tenacious evangelical conviction.

J W Turner, Who Was Who in the Hunter Valley Towns in 1888 (Newcastle, nd); Methodist, 9 Jan 1904; NMH, 22 Dec 1903

DON WRIGHT