Sherman Hall was born on April 30, 1800, in Weathersfield, Windsor, Vermont, United States; the son of Aaron and Sarah (Brigham) Hall. Through his maternal grandmother he was related to the Sherman family of which Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was a member.
After preparation in Phillips Academy Sherman entered Dartmouth College, from which he was graduated in 1828. In 1831 he graduated from Andover Theological Seminary.
The year 1831 marked Hall's ordination at Woburn, Massachusetts, by the Reverend Lyman Beecher and his departure for his mission field on Lake Superior under appointment of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. At Lapointe, a fur-trading post on Madeline Island, close to the site of an early Jesuit mission on the south shore of Lake Superior, Sherman Hall established a mission of the American Board, the first mission among the Chippewa since the time of the Jesuits. From this outpost the Indians west and south of Lake Superior were visited and mission stations founded among them.
Because of the efforts of the United States government to promote a policy of civilization and education among the Indians by aiding schools at mission posts, Hall’s position at the head of one of the largest of the North American mission fields was one of considerable importance. That his work was appreciated by the government is evident in the large grants of money given to his schools. At least two of these were opened on Madeline Island. The resident Indians and some of the numerous bands that came to trade were instructed in the civilized crafts, and a church was built.
With great labor and care Hall learned the difficult Chippewa language and between 1833 and 1856 translated or supervised the translation of textbooks, hymns, and portions of the Bible into the native tongue. These translations, printed in the East, were used widely among the Chippewa. Three editions of the New Testament, in the translation of which he was assisted by Henry Blatchford, a native interpreter, were issued during his lifetime.
In 1852 the United States government invited Hall to become superintendent of a manual labor school to be established, as an experiment, among the Chippewa Indians concentrated at the junction of the Crow Wing and Mississippi rivers. In November 1854, after a little more than a year’s service as missionary and superintendent of the school, he resigned from the position, since the American Board had come to the conclusion that it was no longer expedient to help support a missionary at a place where the good he might accomplish would be offset by the encroaching evils of the frontier. He retired to a farm that he had bought in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, and became the pastor of a little Congregational church there. From that time until his death in 1879 he served this small parish, financially aided by the American Home Missionary Society. In the last years of his life he was judge of probate and superintendent of schools.
Sherman Hall was married to Betsey Parker in 1831.
