Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY
BOONE HALL, BENNETT HALL, and FRANCES HALL
Community and Staff
Master Craftsmen of Brooms and Furniture

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TAGS:  Boone Hall, Bennett Hall, Frances Hall, Frances Hall Powell, Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan County KY, chair making, broom-making, woodworking, Line Fork, carving, mountain crafts, Berea craft program

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BOONE HALL, BENNETT HALL and FRANCES HALL
Community and Staff

The Hall family lived near Pine Mountain Settlement School (PMSS) on Bear Branch in Letcher County. They were a family of craftsmen who were well-known to the staff at Line Fork Settlement, PMSS’s satellite campus at Gilley, Kentucky.  Line Fork Medical Settlement was just to the east of Pine Mountain and across the Harlan County line in Letcher County. Three children from the family are known to have attended the Settlement School: Boone Hall, Frances Hall, and Bennett Hall.

In 1922 Evelyn K. Wells records in her history of the Pine Mountain Settlement School that the Hall brothers,  Bennett Hall and Boone Hall, were working on their craft of broom-making and furniture making at their home on Bear Branch, near Gilley,  about six miles from Pine Mountain Settlement School.

The Halls were one of the earliest families in Eastern Kentucky. The Halls in Letcher County were most likely [?] descended from Bennett Hall, Sr. who was living at Closeplint, near Harlan in 1910 [?].  The Halls were an industrious and talented family. In addition to the manufacture of elegant brooms, the Halls also began to make stools and small chairs constructed of local wood and seats woven with hickory cane. The narrow strips of hickory cane (the outer bark of the hickory tree) were common to early pioneer families in the area. The Hall brothers and later their sister Frances Hall,  all attended Pine Mountain School and quickly formed a close relationship with the School that lasted for most of the Boarding School years.

In 1925 Ethel de Long Zande wrote to donor Mrs. William Burke Belknap and sent her family some brooms made by Boone Hall as thanks for the Belknaps making the long journey to the School. Further, as a means of apologizing that she did not spend time with them, she offers to ask Boone Hall to make some small children’s chairs for the family. The Belknap family, of Louisville,  well known in Kentucky, were introduced to the School through Berea College where William Burke Belknap was deeply engaged.

The first William Belknap was President of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company and William Burke Belknap was an economist and professor of economics at the University of Louisville. As a trustee of Berea College, he developed a deep appreciation for mountain crafts. He also served two terms as a Kentucky legislator in the General Assembly and was a strong supporter of the people in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. As the owner of Land O’Goshen Farms, he was brought into close touch with the rigors of farm life and was a particularly strong supporter of Pine Mountain’s farm. He raised and bred both sheep and horses at his farm. He also served for a time as president of the F.C. Cooperative Milk Producers Association. Pine Mountain developed a special fondness for the Belknap family and through the Belknap family many craftsmen flourished at the School. The Belknaps were instrumental in bringing Boone Hall to Berea where he refined his woodworking skills. The Halls were among many good woodworkers who benefited from Berea’s training.

Unlike his older brother, Boone, who sought work in a variety of venues, Bennet Hall, remained close to the School and also developed a close relationship with many staff while continuing to work on campus. One staff member had a particular fondness for the Halls and for their work. Alice Joy Keith, a much-loved teacher at Pine Mountain, came back for a visit in June of 1945 and stayed in the Boone Hall home in Gilley, an event that was recorded in the Gilley News section of The Mountain Eagle.  Alice Joy Keith, a graduate of Berkeley was a major contributor to the development of sonar systems during WWII, and was a great admirer of the work of the Halls as the Halls were an admirer of her educational skills.

BOONE HALL Community and Staff: Line Fork Settlement

The conditions in the early Hall home were difficult and like many families, the children were exposed to many diseases and infections. Medical care was rarely available, prompting the establishment of Line Fork Settlement by Pine Mountain Settlement School early in its history. In 1925 Dr. Ida Stapleton was the physician at Line Fork Settlement, not far from Bear Branch. She noted in her weekly report that she had treated the younger Boone Hall for what she believed might be sunstroke, but following testing by doctors in Harlan, he was diagnosed as having spinal meningitis, a serious and potentially deadly illness.

In a letter to PMSS Co-Director Katherine Pettit in 1936 Dr. Stapleton was still concerned about Boone Hall’s earlier illness which Dr. Stapleton continued to believe was not meningitis but was sunstroke. She writes,

Boone Hall is still very sick and they telegraphed Frank [Bennett ?] to come home. He is here now and will not go back if he can find some work. The house is in quarantine altho the Co. Health doctor said it was not the most contagious kind [of meningitis]. It is so difficult for the family to settle down to patient nursing. I still think it is a case of sunstroke with complications.

It is uncertain if the poem that follows her remarks is hers and in reference to the patient, or if it is inserted to cover her other frustrations expressed in the letter. Or, it may be deeply rooted in her experiences while working in Turkey before Pine Mountain. There she and her husband witnessed the Armenian genocide.

He who has built a tower
Laughs at the wind-torn flower
Laughs at the dust-dry streams
But out of the flower’s sorry
Out of the river’s smart
Still may he build tomorrow

Yours
Ida Stapleton

Whatever the cause of Boone’s illness, it signaled a difficult turn of events for his health and for his livelihood. As the years passed, Boone made brooms and other woodwork central to his life while doing other jobs both at home and as a migrant worker in jobs in the northern cities in the U.S. In 1944 Boone Hall was back at Bear Branch and he applied to Pine Mountain Settlement for an opening at the Line Fork Cabin to be the caretaker. By that time the cabin had been vacated by the medical doctor and her staff and was no longer a viable satellite of the Pine Mountain Settlement School. It was, in fact, at great risk of vandalism. Boone, who had no wife or family, hoped to bring his sister Frances Hall Powell, a widow, to come live with him where the two would be a crafts team continuing the broom-making traditions that Boone Hall had learned and taught them so many years ago at Pine Mountain and at Berea College. 

Hubert Hadley, then Director, hired Boone for the caretaker position and the two Halls moved into the Line Fork Cabin and continued producing brooms and small woodworking projects and also made themselves available to the School for larger woodworking projects and for teaching craft workshops.

014 April 29, 1944. To Mrs. Edna Smith, Gilley, KY, from Mr. William D. Webb, Acting Director, responding to her inquiry about a caretaker summer job at Line Fork Cabins. “We are told that you were once a Pine Mountain Student…. Mr. Bennett Hall [sic] and his sister, Mrs. [Frances Hall] Powell, recently of Michigan, [have been hired] to take care of the Cabins…. They, as you know, were also students at the School here.” 

When Boone and Frances Hall left the cabin on Line Fork they left a remarkable legacy of craftsmanship in the community. It was only a few weeks later that the cabin they occupied so productively, was burned to the ground by an unknown arson, ending the architectural legacy of Line Fork and the Hall’s association with the School.

Bennett and his sister Frances’s works may be found in many households in the Pine Mountain area and in many homes throughout the country. Their products were the result of highly skilled craftsmanship and were unique in their finely crafted twisted-handle treatment that may be seen in the following photographs.

*In her letter to PMSS Frances refers to “Boone” suggesting that Bennett answered to both names ??

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GALLERY: BOONE HALL Community and Staff
[Photographs by Arthur Dodd, School Photographer]

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See Also:
BENNETT BAILEY HALL Community (Password Protected)

Return To:
BIOGRAPHY – A-Z

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Title	Boone Hall, Bennett Hall and Frances Hall
Alt. Title	Hall Family
Identifier	https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=56627
Creator	Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY.
Alt. Creator	Ann Angel Eberhardt ; Helen Hayes Wykle ; Arthur Dodd, Photographer; Dorothy Nace, Publicist
Subject Keyword	broom craft, crafts, furniture making, Gilley, Kentucky, Frances Hall, whittling, Linefork, Linefork Cabin,
Subject LCSH	Hall, Boone,  — 1xxx – 19xx. Hall, Bennett Pine Mountain Settlement School (Pine Mountain, Ky.) — History. Harlan County (Ky.) — History. Education — Kentucky — Harlan County. Rural schools — Kentucky — History. Schools — Appalachian Region, Southern.
Date	2021-12-08
Publisher	Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY.
Contributor	Dorothy Nace
Type	Collections ; text ; image ;
Format	Original and copies of documents and correspondence in file folders in filing cabinet.
Source	Series 09: Biography
Language	English
Relation	Is related to: Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, Series 09: Biography.; Line Fork Medical Settlement
Coverage Temporal	1940s-1960’s
Coverage Spatial	Pine Mountain, KY ; Harlan County, KY ;
Rights	Any display, publication, or public use must credit the Pine Mountain Settlement School. Copyright retained by the creators of certain items in the collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Donor	n/a
Description	Core documents, correspondence, writings, and administrative papers of Boone Hall; Bennett Hall; Frances Hall ; clippings, photographs, books by or about the Hall siblings
Acquisition	n/d
Citation	“[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. Pine Mountain Settlement School Institutional Papers. Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY.
Processed By	Helen Hayes Wykle ; Ann Angel Eberhardt ;
Last Updated	2021-12-08 hhw; 2022-04-07 hhw
Sources	Dorothy Nace Scrapbook Letters and correspondence