The Rev. Emily Stevens Hall; Pioneering Priest

The Rev. Emily Stevens Hall, who became an Episcopal priest at the age of 61 after raising seven sons, died Saturday at her home in Santa Paula. She was 74.

Hall, one of the first women ordained as a priest in California, had religion “in her blood,” said her husband, K. B. (Pete) Hall. Her great-grandfather and father were Episcopal bishops, and one of her sons is a priest.

Hall moved to Southern California from Texas in 1920, when her father, the late William Bertrand Stevens, was elected bishop coadjutor of Los Angeles. After graduating from Oakland’s Mills College in 1940 with a music and theater degree, she met her future husband and changed her mind about going to New York to become a stage actress.

When Pete Hall was discharged from the Army in 1945, he and his wife moved to the Ojai Valley and operated an apricot orchard for 40 years. In the mid-1970s, Emily Hall decided to become a priest and attended Bloy House, the Episcopal School of Theology in Claremont.

“I was happy to see her do it,” Pete Hall said. “She had spent her life taking care of her family and this was an opportunity for her to do what she wanted to do.”

In 1978, Emily Hall became the first female graduate of Bloy House. She was ordained a deacon that year and became a priest in 1979. She assisted the Rev. James Corbett for eight years at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ojai and was known to parishioners as Mother Emily.

When she and her husband retired in 1986, they moved to Santa Paula. She remained active in the church, serving on several committees on the diocesan level, assisting the Rev. William Baumgarten at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Santa Paula, and leading retreats.

“She was down to Earth and had a real sense of God, and was able to communicate that in a frank and personal manner,” Baumgarten said.

After she returned from a cruise to the South Pacific last October, Hall was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas.

In addition to her husband, survivors include a sister, seven sons and 16 grandchildren.

The Rev. Frederick Borsch, Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, will celebrate a Requiem Mass at 11 a.m. Monday at St. Paul’s. Instead of flowers, the family requests that any tributes be in the form of donations to the Emily Hall Scholarship Fund, Bloy House, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, Calif. 91711.