One of several mixed-race children of a white planter, Wall and others were freed by their father, given a bequest and guardian, and sent to Ohio to be educated at Oberlin College.

Wall moved to Washington, DC, where he practiced law and was appointed as the city's first black justice of the peace and a police magistrate.

[2] In 1838, Stephen Wall freed O.S.B., Napoleon, Caroline, Benjamin, and Sara, and sent them north to live in the Quaker settlement of Harveysburg, Ohio, trusting $1,000 for each child to their guardian, Nathan Dix.

[4] Wall became active with Langston and other abolitionists in Oberlin, working to resist the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

[4] After a decade, Wall became involved in a damaging scandal and charges of corruption; his reappointment as justice of the peace was rejected by the Senate.

As the capital became a more hostile place to African Americans following Reconstruction, they saw their father's life turned upside down.

[4] Son Edward married a French woman and moved to Canada, where he worked for the railroads in a job reserved for whites for decades more.

He and his wife eventually changed their names and moved to other neighborhoods in order to pass into the white community.