Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Hall, Luther E. May 4, 1936
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Marilyn Ransom mlnransom@chartermi.net June 16, 2010, 4:59 pm

The Ionia Sentinel-Standard, Tuesday, May 5, 1936
Final rites for Luther E. Hall will be held Thursday afternoon at 2 o’clock 
from the home on M-14, four miles north of Ionia, where he had lived for 83 of 
the nearly 91 years of his notable life.  Burial will be at Orleans cemetery.

Mr. Hall died in the mid-afternoon Monday at the age of 90 years and three 
months.  Since last November he had been bed-fast because of an illness which 
began in June 1935, and which gradually sapped his tremendous vitality.  Even 
as long ago as November members of his family expected that the end would soon 
come.  But the reservoir of physical health had accumulated a reserve of 
resistance through long years of right living and hard work that defied death 
for many weeks.  The life of Luther E. Hall was of a pattern woven of the 
lasting threads of rugged physique and spiritual integrity, of lofty courage, 
of tremendous industry, of dauntless sprit; a man who “dared do all that may 
become a man.”  His life reflected the attributes of his character in the 
notable and worthy success of his undertakings; the respect accorded his 
knowledge, his judgment and his accomplishment, the friendships that increased 
through the long years of intercourse in all the worth-while endeavors of his 
fellow men.  High-hearted he met life early on the highway, faithfully and 
valiantly he journeyed with it through four score years and ten and he gave it 
up at the end, it can be believed, with no regrets.

Luther E. Hall was born January 27, 1846 on the farm of his parents, Joshua 
and Sarah Hall, less than a mile south of the home where he died.  When he was 
eight years old his parents moved to the farm on which, except for six years, 
he was to spend the remainder of his life.  As a young man, after he had 
farmed at home for two years following the completion of his education in the 
common schools and in commercial college, he went to Iroquois County, 
Illinois, where he leased a farm and worked it for six years.  Then he 
returned to the parental acres and bought the old home place of 80 acres to 
the improvement and development of which he devoted his remaining days.

Mr. Hall in December 1869 married Miss Eva Rickey, of Orleans, whose death 
occurred 18 months later.  August 27, 1872 he was married in Iroquois County, 
Illinois to Miss Maria Allen, whose death occurred in 1925.  To his second 
marriage four children were born, Alma, the wife of Fergus T. Flanagan, of 
Orleans, who died in 1908; Louis Hall of Orleans, Frank Hall and Mrs. L. T. 
Morse , of Ionia township.  Surviving him also with his three children is one 
sister, Mrs. Ed. B. Higbee.  Four brothers and one sister had preceded him in 
death.  

Mr. Hall found time to give to public service as well as to the interest of 
his own calling.  He was one of the oldest members of the Michigan 
Horticultural society, and had served it as a director and as chairman of its 
finance committee.  As a horticulturist he was nationally known and his advice 
was sought by many groups including the Michigan State College where he 
frequently was summoned to lecture to classes on horticulture.  He had been 
honored by selection as Master Farmer by Michigan agriculture.

He had served his township of Orleans as highway commissioner, member of the 
board of review, and for two terms as supervisor.  He was one of the county’s 
first good roads advocates and put his belief in the future of good roads into 
practical operation in his own township.  Both there and elsewhere in Ionia 
county he was one of those instrumental in the building of its first improved 
highways, predecessors to the present system. 

During the world war Mr. Hall served as a member of the district board of 
appeals under the selective service, or draft law, meeting with the board at 
Grand Rapids.  He was elected to represent Ionia county in the Michigan 
legislature in the fall of 1926, serving there two terms from January 1, 1927 
to January 1, 1931.  Mr. Hall was a life member of the Ionia Elks Lodge and an 
honorary member of the Ionia Rotary club.  

He was a contributor to church benevolences and support and several years ago 
he had placed in trust $4,000 for the benefit of two Ionia churches and a 
cemetery; $1,000 f or SS. Peter and Paul church, $2,000 for the Church of 
Christ and $1,000 for the Orleans cemetery association.

If one outstanding accomplishments of Mr. Hall’s life is to be selected to 
illustrate his personality it may be his apple raising.  Where his orchards 
stand Indians camped when he was a boy on the farm.  In 1881 he set out 
another 20 acres.  Then 20 years later, when the world war was over and Mr. 
Hall was 74, with his two sons, Louis and Frank, he set out his greatest 
planting, 60 acres of young trees.  Ionians were astounded at the courage of 
the man who at that age would set forth on the production of a crop that would 
not mature for many years.  Yet his orchards grew and prospered and he lived 
to see them in the full fruitage of their maturity.  His orchards were to him 
more than a commercial enterprise.  Mr. Hall was a nature lover.  He loved to 
wander among his trees and his tall, gaunt form abroad in his orchards was a 
familiar sight to all who passed that way.

In 1932 in discussing conditions in the industry and the troubles of the fruit 
growers Mr. Hall made this characteristic remarks:  “If I’m around next spring 
its just as likely the boys and I will set out some more orchard.  This ought 
to be a good time for it, with everybody getting discouraged and letting 
things go.”

To the end of his life he was seeing it that way.  It was always a good time 
to go ahead and do things when “everybody was getting discouraged and letting 
things go.”



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