Pastor Hall

Rev. J. P. Hall, a bachelor of about thirty-five years of age, came from Austin, Texas, to Plumtree in the early nineteen hundreds where he established a boy’s institute. There were no means of traveling except walking, riding horseback, or by wagon. Mr. Hall often made business trips for the institute walking across the Lick Log Mountain, a distance of three miles from Plumtree, then up the Toe River Valley, a distance of three miles, to catch a train at Minneapolis. He often stopped to rest and get a drink of water at the home of Thomas and Julie Etter Pittman, about mid-way between the two points of Plumtree and Minneapolis, known as Frank. Mr. Hall would have prayer and later worship services in this home. There was an old abandoned building once used as a church by the Free Will Baptists in which Mr. Hall began having worship services. Miss Nell Hall, who was a home mission teacher and a cousin of Mr. Hall, started conducting Sunday School there in the afternoon. She would walk a distance of ten miles a day conducting Sunday School at Hughes community in the morning and at Frank in the afternoon. Many fine, cultured, devoted men and women from all over the South came to Plumtree to help in religious worship in the five branches of the church that Mr. Hall established. These workers made their headquarters in the home of Thomas Pittman. They taught summer school for children, adult Bible classes at night, and held revival meetings, accepting no remuneration for their services.