Did Julia Hall Invent?

MY GREAT-GRAND-mother Emily Brooks Hall was a sister of both Charles Martin Hall and Julia Brainerd Hall (“Notes From the Field,” Summer 1998), and I have taken great interest in the story of the invention of the Hall-Héroult process of manufacturing aluminum and related family history. It is my belief that Martha Moore Trescott’s theory of Julia Hall as “co-inventor” has no basis in fact. There are no family documents, stories, or lore to support the assumptions she makes. Although Uncle Charles died in 1914 and Aunt Julia in 1926,1 have made specific inquiries to senior members of the family who had contact with Julia’s sister Louie and can find no confirmation of such a theory. Julia resided for many years with Louie, and it was Louie who originally presented to Alcoa the letters of Charles to Julia and others.

My grandmother Yeoli Stimson Acton was a caretaker and hostess for her uncle Charles in the years before his death. She shared the family history with me in the 1960s, and she and her husband were sources of material for Junius Edwards’s 1955 book The Immortal Woodshed. My grandfather Edward Acton was superintendent of the Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, aluminum works from 1914 to 1938. Although my grandparents were private, modest persons and would draw no attention to themselves and their relationship to Mr. Hall, I believe that they also would not have wanted his accomplishments, or the efforts of his sister Julia to provide encouragement and family support, to be misinterpreted. Furthermore, it is my belief that Julia herself would be extremely distressed by this attempt to revise history.

Emily Acton Phillips
Dallas, Tex.