Background
David Hale was born on April 25, 1791, in Lisbon, Connecticut, United States, the son of the Reverend David and Lydia (Austin) Hale. He was a nephew of Nathan Hale of Revolutionary War fame.
David Hale was born on April 25, 1791, in Lisbon, Connecticut, United States, the son of the Reverend David and Lydia (Austin) Hale. He was a nephew of Nathan Hale of Revolutionary War fame.
David attended scholl till the age of sixteen.
At the age of sixteen David Hale became a clerk in a store in Coventry, Connecticut, and two years later went to Boston to accept a similar position in a commission house.
Owing to the business depression caused by the War of 1812, he returned to Coventry where he taught a district school. Later he returned to Boston to assist his cousin, Nathan Hale, who was editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser.
In 1815 he again engaged in business as the active partner in an importing and jobbing drygoods firm, but owing to his serious illness in 1817, this business venture proved unsuccessful. He then contributed to the Boston Recorder, one of the first religious weekly newspapers in this country, and proposed to establish a religious daily paper in Boston. Upon the recommendation of his friend, Gerard Hallock, he became the business manager of the New York Journal of Commerce when it was started in 1827 by Arthur Tappan, a public-spirited business man prominent in religious and philanthropic activities.
When after sixteen months, Tappan had spent nearly $30, 000 on the paper, he turned it over to his brother Lewis, and early in 1829 the latter entered into an arrangement with Hale and Hallock by which, at the end of two years, they became the sole proprietors. Hale did not confine his work to the business department of the paper, but wrote articles and editorials as well. On occasion Hale would mount a chair in his office or at the Exchange, and read to the assembled merchants the latest foreign news. The publishers also ran expresses with relays of horses from Washington to New York and secured for their paper the president’s messages and the proceedings of Congress ten hours or more ahead of the United States mail.
Continuing to carry out the aims for which the paper had been established by Arthur Tappan, Hale and Hallock did not permit the advertisement of theatres, lotteries, or business transacted on Sunday, and no work connected with the editing and publishing of the paper was permitted between midnight on Saturday and midnight on Sunday, with the result that the Monday morning edition appeared an hour late.
Upon his death early in 1849, the Journal of Commerce continued under the name of Hallock, Hale & Hallock, David A. Hale, his son, representing the heirs of the estate, and William H. Hallock, son of Gerard Hallock, being admitted to partnership.
Hale was an active churchman and took great interest in the Broadway Tabernacle, completed in 1836 as the first strong Congregational church in New York City. When in 1840 the church property was sold on the foreclosure of a mortgage, Hale purchased it, and during his ownership the building was used for large public meetings, lectures, and concerts, as well as for religious services.
Hale was married, on January 18, 1815, to his first cousin, Laura Hale, the daughter of Richard Hale. She died in 1824 and on August 22, 1825, he married Lucy S. Turner of Boston.