Prince Hall early life

The revolutionary achievements of Prince Hall are a known fact amongst the black community. However, when it comes to Prince Hall early life, there are very minimum details available. There have been various records regarding his birth and early life, most of which have been proven wrong. However, based on William Grimshaw’s “Official History of Freemasonry among the Colored People of North America” written in 1903, Prince Hall was born in Barbados and was the son of a Thomas Prince Hall (a white Englishman) and a mulatto mother who fled away to the British Colony of Massachusetts, wherein Prince Hall later became a renowned Methodist Minister. However, this information about Prince Hall early life was rejected by the Black Freemasonry scholars as most of these claims were inconsistent and without any concrete records.

According to another historian named Charles Wesley, the history of Prince Hall early life was a bit different from the previous stories. He compiled several archival sources and put forth a theory stating that Prince Hall, at the mere age of eleven was probably enslaved to a tanner named William Hall in Boston. He studied by himself or may be with the help of a few white people. During that era, a few new Englanders ensured that they teach their slaves and also the Free Blacks to learn to read and write. Based on a few historic documents in Massachusetts, a slave owner names William Hall had freed a black man named Prince Hall on 9th April, 1765. However, this record was also not very conclusive as according to other records, there were more than 21 males, each named as Prince Hall, while many other people named as Prince Hall also lived in Boston at the same time. However, it was certain that Prince Hall was certainly free and literate by 1770 and lived in the city of Boston.