Charles francis hall biography for kids

HALL, CHARLES FRANCIS, Arctic explorer; b. 1821; d. 8 Nov. 1871.

Charles Francis Hall was born in the state of Vermont in 1821, but while he was still a child his family moved to Rochester, New Hampshire, where he spent his boyhood and received what little formal schooling he was given.

In the 1840s he married and drifted westward, arriving in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1849. There he established a small seal-engraving business and, in the late 1850s, two small newspapers, the Cincinnati Occasional and the Daily Press.

During Hall’s years in Cincinnati, he developed a passionate interest in the Arctic, reading widely in its geography and history.

Always driven by boundless energy and an inquiring mind, he decided in 1859, at the age of 39, that he was destined to find survivors of Sir John Franklin*’s expedition, which had disappeared almost 15 years before.

The discovery in 1859 of bodies and relics of the Franklin expedition on King Willia