Bobby Hall On the Life of His Dad Robert Loring Hall Sr.

Before looking at the life of Robert Loring Hall, Sr., (Dad) we need to take a look back at his ancestors. Dad’s great-great grandfather, Joshua James Hall. 

Joshua James Hall first lived in Maryland and had one son, James Madison Hall. He later lived in Vicksburg, Mississippi and then New Orleans.

In 1839 Joshua James Hall and his son James Madison Hall came to Texas, and settled in Houston County, Texas, on the bank of the Trinity River at a place known now as Hall’s Bluff. It was here that he purchased the Ramon de la Garza League (approximately 23,654 acres) and established a “port” there. From this location products from the area were loaded on boats and shipped South down the Trinity River to a warehouse in Liberty Texas, and then to Galveston, Texas. The travel on the Trinity River was dependent upon the flow of the river and once railroads were built this port was later abandoned. Joshua James married Mahala Lee Roberts Sharp who was one of the daughters of Elisha Roberts, an earlier settler of San Augustine. She was the widow of Sam Sharp of San Augustine. To this union were born a daughter Roberta and a son Horace Oscar, Dad’s grandfather.

On a side note: James Madison lived in Houston County, Texas, and Liberty County, Texas, and traveled back and forth between the two. James Madison was at one time Mayor of Liberty, Texas, and also Provost Marshall of Liberty. James Madison kept a daily dairy of this life from 1860 until his death in 1866. One interesting note is at one time he tried R.O.W McManus, a grandfather to many of the McManus’ living now in Chambers County, Texas, for treason and R.O.W. was acquitted.

While in Tyler Felix and Susie B. worked for the White Abstract company. Around 1924, Felix and Susie B. moved to Canton, Texas, and bought an abstract company and operated it until his death in 1926. The children would come to the abstract company after school. From age 7 Dad would observe the operation of the abstract company and would play with the pencils etc. until at age 9 he would go to the courthouse and record “take-offs” for the abstract company. “Take-offs” are made by reading the various instruments filed in the county clerk records and placing the particulars – grantor, grantee, date and volume and page – on a card and then adding a brief description of what the instruments were accomplishing.

Dad’s dad passed away March 17, 1926, and his mother continued to operate the abstract company until her passing in 1961.

Dad graduated from Canton High School in 1930 and wanted to become an electrical engineer. He was attending college in Arlington, Texas, on a co-op basis. He would work 6 months and then attend college 6 months. Being the depression and as everyone was having a tough time financially, he had to quit college and become a full-time abstractor. He did abstract work there in Canton and around the State. On one occasion he was working with a lawyer named Charles Troy out of Beeville.

Dad had some experience helping a land surveyor in Van Zandt County. Therefore, when he arrived in Chambers County, he recognized the need for a land surveyor in Chambers County. There was one gentleman, W. O. Work, and Dad began to work with him. At this time engineers were licensed to do land surveying work in Texas and also Licensed State Land Surveyors. The latter was licensed to survey State owned lands or the boundaries between State owned lands and private owned lands. Dad studied and applied for the exam to become a Licensed State Land Surveyor and the State Board sent the exam to the School Superintendent and he took the exam and passed and received his license August 29, 1939. In 1955, the State Legislature created the Registered Public Surveyor and Dad applied for this licensed and was granted a license. His License Number was 53. 

Besides being an Abstractor, he was a Licensed Real Estate Broker with the credentials to appraise land. He served on the first Board of the Chambers County Appraisal District. He wrote and presented several papers to Surveyor Associations and Land Title Associations on the preparation of Abstracts. He served the community in many ways: past member of the Anahuac Independent School District Board of Trustees, Charter member of the Anahuac Lions Club, Charter member of the Texas

Surveyors Association, now Texas Society of Professional Land Surveyors. Member of the First Methodist Church of Anahuac where he served as a Trustee.

In the early years in Anahuac, Texas, and surrounding area many of the rice farmers worked seven days a week from early in the morning to late in the evening. Many were not able to attend church. A men’s Sunday School class was formed, and various men would teach God’s word early on Sunday morning at the Rig Theater. Dad was one of these teachers. The farmers would come to the Rig Theater in their work clothes and hear the message and then go to the field. Those who were not farmers would attend the church of their choice the rest of Sunday. Dad would teach the Men’s Sunday School class at the Methodist Church and alternate with other men on a quarterly basis. In the late 50’s the Methodist Church and the Baptist Church men’s bible classes would have a reunion and members of the first class at the Rig Theater would return to reminisce about those days.

As mentioned above Dad began work in Anahuac at the Chambers County Abstract Company first as Manager and then as Lessee. In the early years, if a person wanted to examine the land records associated with their property, they would order an abstract of their property from a Title/Abstract Company. The Abstract company would research the County records for all records affecting the subject property. They would make copies of the documents located in the County/District Clerks records and place them in an abstract divided by type of instrument and in chronological order. Therefore, the person ordering the abstract would have a history of their property. Many times, these abstracts were given to a land lawyer to study so as to advise his/her clients as to the validity of their title.

In the 1940’s Dad was not only working in the Chambers County Abstract Company but was working at abstract companies in Southeast Texas. He helped with a company in Liberty, Texas, predecessor to Tarver Title Company. He and a friend from Houston started the Hardin County, Texas, abstract company in Kountze.  He was working also at an abstract company in Orange, Texas. I remember as a child not seeing much of Dad during the week, but he was always home on the weekend for us and church.

To accomplish the travel between work and home he obtained his pilot’s license and purchased a small airplane. He would fly from Anahuac to Liberty then Orange and then Kountze. The abstract company in Kountze was managed by a gentleman named “Slim” England, and the building was a two-story building.  Slim lived in the upper room and when Dad could not get home because of darkness he would stay there also. I remember in the late 1940’s we were all home and a hurricane came in and I remember mother talking to Dad on the phone because he was trapped in Kountze. 

Dad used his survey skills to create what is known as a “Title Map” of areas of the County he was working in. Dad would place a piece of velum paper on his drafting table and would start with the first deed for a land survey and plot it and the following deeds. With this map a person could look at the map and determine who had owned parcels in the survey and also have all of the record information about the parcel. In other words, “you had the title of the land” on a map.

In 1949 Dad saw the need for places for people to purchase a lot in Anahuac to build a home. He bought property and created a subdivision of the property. The subdivision was called the Airport Addition. Today that is the subdivision bisected by East Light Street in Anahuac. In 1952 he added the Belton Lane Addition. Today that is the subdivision bisected by South Kansas south of Belton Lane.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Dad realized that a previous subdivision established in 1910 was not developed. This subdivision known as Bayside Subdivision was located along the shore of Trinity Bay starting at Double Bayou in Oak Island and stretching North several miles. 

When Dad first came to Anahuac and wanted to go fishing in Trinty and Gaveston Bays, he could go to Oak Island and rent a small skiff with a live well and a set of oars from Captain Eddie Johnson. Captain Eddie would tow a string of the skiffs behind his shrimp boat out to the reefs in these bays and let the fishermen get in their rented skiff and he would furnish the bait for their live well. The fishermen would anchor there and fish. Captain Eddie would check on them from time to time and when all was done tow them back to his camp on Double Bayou.

Dad realized that this would be a great area to purchase the lots in the Bayside Subdivision and then divide them into smaller lots and sell them to people to build weekend/summer houses. With these houses they could use their own boats to fish Trinity and Galveston Bays.

In time he created 11 subdivisions in the area. After Dad’s passing, I found a small black binder containing what he did for each of these subdivisions. I remember one in particular where he listed the block of the Bayside Subdivision and the number of lots. He then listed who he sold the lots to and the amount of the sale. What I remember most is he then stated, “the cost per lot was 55 cents”. That is how he educated three children and sent them to college, and we did not have to have student loans. One of the subdivisions on Eagle Road, Double Bayou Estates, was developed in the middle of an old rice field. When he got through, he saw that there were not trees on the lots and he found a nursery in Liberty and purchased 400 Chinese Tallow trees and had them planted on these lots and the nursery guaranteed them to live. I am sorry that this is part of the reason we have an abundance of Tallow trees in Chambers County. 

Dad surveyed the lots and roads and then had Edgar Haynes build the roads. 

I remember as a young lad helping by being there when the oyster shell was delivered to the roads. I was to sign each ticket the truck driver had and give him a copy and keep a copy for Dad. Several of these truck drivers were the Fancher brothers and King brothers.

After acquiring his Licensed State Land Surveyor’s License Dad along with his abstracting, became active in land surveying in Southeast Texas. I have one of his surveys that he made for his mother in Van Zandt County, Texas. He worked with W. O. Work and together they did some surveys. He did all of the surveying for the creation of the subdivisions in Anahuac and Oak Island. 

On one occasion Kyle White came to him to help with a survey and division of multiple sections of land in Southeast Chambers County, Texas.  These sections are the ones adjacent to Hebert Road and Whites Ranch Road and East of Highway 124. Kyle White had W. O. Work hired to do the surveying, but due to illness he could not do the work. Kyle convinced Dad and Donnie Syphrett and engineer to do the work. This was during and after World War II. Dad could not find iron pipe or iron rods to mark the corners. Dad found a plumber that had an overabundance of 2-inch cast iron pipe and the corners were marked with this pipe. I have surveyed several of those sections in my surveying career and have found these cast iron pipes.

After finishing this survey Dad was asked to divide the White properties West of High Island and South of the Intracoastal Canal. I remember helping on a couple of occasions with this survey. I was there mainly to be the “pack mule” to carry equipment. This was long before GPS and the methods used to survey today. Dad was surveying everything in VARAS. This is the original length of measurement used by the early surveyors in Texas. He purchased a 100 VARA tape to use in this marshy area. This tape had a length of 277.78 feet. At first all of the work was done close to Old Highway 87 and everyone could walk in from the highway. Later the distance became greater, and the work was approaching the Intracoastal Canal, and the Whites arranged for the use of a large marsh buggy from the Pipkins in Jefferson County. One of my cousins had just got out of the Navy and he came down to help in the survey. On one of the days the crew was working adjacent to the Canal and the buggy broke down. Dad knew there were several members of the crew that could not walk the 3 miles from the canal to the highway as it was through very marshy terrain; therefore, he sent my cousin and the younger men to walk through the marsh to the highway and Dad the others walked the 6 to 7 miles along the bank of the Canal to Highway 124. Of course, there were no portable phones or radios, so those of us back in Anahuac were wondering where Dad was. They all finally got back home after dark. Having followed in my dad’s footsteps in becoming a surveyor I have experienced some of the same troubles.

Dad went into partnership with a gentleman named Dave Limerick and formed the firm of Hall and Limerick Surveyors. I spent every summer from 1953 until 1961 surveying for them and the firm of Hall, Limerick and McCulley Surveyors.

Dad was called upon to survey for many citizens in Southeast Texas and I am sure in a lot of their files there are surveys signed by him.

Dad kept on surveying and in the summer of 1953, I had a chance to attend a Boy Scout Jamboree in California. I was eager to go. The cost was $208.00 dollars plus cost of uniforms. Dad said he would pay for the expense of me going, but I was to pay him back. At this time, he was surveying the rice fields that received irrigation water from the Chambers-Liberty Counties Canal Company. So, I became a part of his survey crew at a $1.00 per hour. I worked in the field during the day and played little league ball in the evenings but I was able to pay him back. At age 12 I started my surveying career and I am still there.

In the early late 1950’s and early 1960’s the oil industry that Chambers County had been so dependent upon was becoming diminished. Industry discovered the West side of Chambers County, Texas, and Dad being an abstractor, land surveyor and realtor was called on to help in this development. 

He was called upon to help in the development of the storage of products on Barber’s Hill. He helped Houston Lighting and Power Company in their acquisition of their electrical generating facilities. He did the title work for this plus the title work for United State Steel acquisition of the 13000 acres of land that is now part of Cedar Port Industrial complex. He continued on with this endeavor until he retired in 1978. 

Dad was a reader. Television was only good when he had trouble going to sleep. He read three newspapers a day including the comics and the obituaries. When HP came out with their first reverse polar calculator, he purchased one. The cost was somewhere around $400 dollars and today you can purchase one for less than $50. He was not surveying but they fascinated him. He wrote surveying programs for them and would give the programs to surveyors. My partner and I purchased an HP computer to do survey calculations. It had a small 3-inch by 3-inch screen and magnetic cards for the programs. Dad had to have one. He got to checking the programs and found an error in their required area program. He corrected it and sent it to HP. 

There were three children born to Dad and Mother: Robert Loring Hall, Jr. – Bobby,

Grace Marie Hall Guillot – Grace, and James Horace Hall – Jimmy.

Bobby followed in Dad’s footsteps. Bobby received an engineering degree and became an engineer and land surveyor. He also does abstract work for surveyors and individuals.

Grace worked for Dad at the Abstract Company and after marrying Roland Guillot and moving to Orange Texas worked for a title company there. On one occasion the lady that went to Orange County Court house to prepare the “take offs” was on vacation. Grace was asked to go do the “take offs”. When Grace returned in a short time the staff wanted to know how she did them so quickly. Her response was “my dad taught me well”. Grace went on to work for a law firm in Beaumont as a Paralegal.

Jimmy became a realtor and successful in insurance. 

We were all successful because of the parents we had and the work ethic they instilled in each of us. We all have instilled the same in our children, his grandchildren.

Through all of our lives we remember the lessons they taught us and most importantly the love of God.