P. Hall (1804–1877). Posthumous Despite the advantages of pedigree and education, Hall was handicapped by the time and place in which he lived. The extensive kinship network of which he was a part would have served him well had the Old Lights been able to maintain their political dominance. Defeats at the polls and in ecclesiastical tribunals pushed them to the margins. Many, like Hall and his father Brenton (who represented Meriden in the legislature for many terms), became anti-federalists and ardent Jeffersonians. Others, like Hall's siblings, abandoned the established Congregational church for dissenting sects. This constituted a major obstacle to success in a state dominated by an oppressive Federalist-Congregationalist political machine. Had Hall followed his Yale classmate and fellow physician Elihu Hubbard Smith to New York City—where political and religious heterodoxy was tolerated—he might have had a more distinguished career. Smith, who also studied medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital, established himself in New York, where he founded America's first medical journal,The Medical Repository. References Mason Fitch Cogswell. n.d. (c. 1806). "From the Characteristics -- An Unpublished Poem." Cogswell Papers. Connecticut Historical Society. Franklin B. Dexter (ed.). The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles. New York, NY: Charles Scribner%27s Sons. Franklin B. Dexter. 1907. Yale Biographies and Annals, 1778-1792. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company. Franklin B. Dexter (ed.). 1916. Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., 1755-1794. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Charles Samuel Hall. 1894. Hall Ancestry. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam. Peter Dobkin Hall. 1984. "The Social Foundations of Professional Credibility: Linking the Medical Profession to Higher Education in Massachusetts and Connecticut, 1700-1830." In Thomas Haskell (ed., The Authority of Experts. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. William Brenton Hall. 1807-1809. Account Book. Wesleyan University Archives. Rufus Matthewson. 1877. "Biographical Sketches of the Early Members of the Middlesex County Medical Society." Connecticut State Medical Society Proceedings. Thomas Miner & William Tully. 1823. Essays on Fevers and Other Medical Subjects. Middletown, CT: E.H. Clark. Edmund S. Morgan. 1962. The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Herbert Thoms (ed.). 1942. Heritage of Connecticut Medicine. New Haven, CT: privately printed. 1764 births 1809 deaths Yale University alumni People of colonial Connecticut People from Wallingford, Connecticut Deaths by horse-riding accident in the United States 18th-century American physicians Accidental deaths in Connecticut Burials in Connecticut