Father and Grandfather

How did Richard Hall's English father and Swiss-French mother come to live in Finland in the 19th century? Depending on the source, the details vary, but in any case, the story must begin with Hall's grandfather John Hall of Tredennick. The most comprehensive information about Richard Hall's family roots can be found in an article published in Finnish newspaper Satakunnan Kansa on 12 September 1937, written while the artist was still alive. The article was written under the pseudonym Arctoterrannus. The information in this post is based on that article unless otherwise stated.

Grandfather John Hall of Tredennick

The personal history of Grandfather Hall is described in the Finnish blog Kadonnutta aikaa (Lost Time). John Hall was born on 6 May 1785 in London and his family owned the Tredneck estate in Middlesex County, England. At some point in his life John Halll moved to St Petersburg, and later from there to Finland. According to geni.com, he had eight children in total, seven of whom were mothered by Louisa Hall. The eighth child was Richard Hall's father William Hall.

A letter from Richard Hall's brother's grandson, Mauri R. Hall to Marketta Seppälä, the director of the Pori Art Museum, from the early 1980s, has been preserved in the archives of the art museum. In the letter he explains that Hall's grandfather had been exiled from England because of his involvement in the Chartist movement on the Irish side. The Chartists were an industrial workers' rights movement active in Britain between 1838 and 1857.

The 1937 newspaper article in Satakunnan Kansa reports that a branch of the English Hall family got into trouble in the early 1700s over marital relations with the Irish O'Connor-Tredennick family. As a result, the Hall family moved to St Petersburg. John Hall moved from St Petersburg to Finland in 1832 after falling out with his family because he had remarried an Estonian woman in his old age. This union resulted in one child, William. According to ancestry.com William's mother was Octavia Creutzenberg, and she was not married to John Hall.

According to the newspaper story, John Hall and his family settled in Finland at Surumäki Manor in Parikkala. He died there in 1859, and his grave still existed at the time of publication in the cemetery of Jouhiniemi Church in Kerimäki. On the other hand, according to the geni.com website, John Hall died in Nojanmaa Manor in Kerimäki.

Father William Hall

William Hall, born in St Petersburg on February 13, 1831, was home-schooled. Lacking funds, John Hall taught his son from textbooks he had written himself. At his father's home school, young William learned many languages: Latin, Greek and several European languages. William also learned Swedish, Finnish and Chinese. According to the Kadonnutta aikaa blog, he was baptised into the Lutheran Church in Parikkala at the age of 16. Later, William's education was supplemented in England, where he lived with his aunt.

William Hall worked as a timber merchant and as a British consul. He married a Swiss-French woman, Alexandrine Cornetz. According to a newspaper story, William Hall was a keen spiritualist. In his memoirs, Sakari Topelius mentions that Consul Hall was 'the apostle of spiritualism in our country', and that his wife was 'a very sensitive medium'. Spiritualism was viewed differently in the 19th century than it is today. For example, at the end of the century, Finnish artists held spiritualist séances, as Nina Kokkinen's dissertation Totuudenetsijät : vuosisadanvaihteen okkulttuuri ja moderni henkisyys Akseli Gallen-Kallelan, Pekka Halosen ja Hugo Simbergin taiteessa (Truth Seekers : Turn-of-the-Century Occult Culture and Modern Spirituality in the Art of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Pekka Halonen and Hugo Simberg) shows.

William Hall worked in the timber trade with the Godenius company in Stockholm, which led the family to move to Sweden. Richard began his studies at the Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts. According to the Lost Times blog, Richard Hall's older brother Edward remained in Pori as a merchant. William Hall later returned to Finland and worked as a bank clerk in Vaasa, handling foreign correspondence. William Hall died in Vaasa in 1900, aged 69.

Here is a first look at the Richard Hall family. I am always happy to receive further information about the family!