Prince Hall - Early Life and Manumission

Early Life and Manumission

Prince Hall’s life history has been a subject of debate. William Grimshaw’s 1903 "Official History of Freemasonry Among the Colored People of North America" began the story that Prince Hall was born in Barbados to a European father and an African-European mother who fled to the British colony of Massachusetts where Hall became a Methodist minister. Black Freemasonry scholars have for the most part, rejected Grimshaw’s account due to inconsistencies.

Historian Charles H. Wesley put together an alternative history for Prince Hall (which currently serves as the widely accepted narrative) through compilations of archival sources. In the course of his research, Wesley was able to debunk many of the earlier fictions and unprovable statement created by Grimshaw such as the story that Prince Hall was born in Barbados and was a Methodist Minister. He claimed that Prince Hall was enslaved to the tanner William Hall at age eleven in Boston. Prince Hall may have become literate on his own, or through the direct help of white people. Some New Englanders made a point of teaching slaves and Free Blacks to read and write. Documents in Massachusetts showing that slaveowner William Hall freed a man named Prince Hall on April 9, 1765, but this cannot be conclusively linked to any one individual, as there exists record of no fewer than 21 males named Prince Hall, and several other men named Prince Hall were living in Boston at that time. But it is certain that by 1770, Prince Hall was a free, literate black man living in Boston.