ISAAC GREATHOUSE HALL

Sacramento County

Biographies

ISAAC GREATHOUSE HALL

ISAAC GREATHOUSE HALL was born in Spencer County, Indiana, October 22, 1828 - his parents being Shadrac and Mary (see sketch of R. B. Hall). I. G. Hall came to the Pacific Coast in 1852 by the Oregon route, arriving in Portland, September 3, without a cent. He first went to work in a saw-mill, but after one month of that drudgery he started on foot for the mines in northern Oregon, and made the journey of 300 miles, carrying his blankets, provisions and gun. Counting the 2,700 miles, more or less, across the plains, nearly all of which was also made afoot, his six months of almost steady travel, antedating the era of walking matches and tramps, probably beat the record, but as will be seen presently it was only an initial spurt in the walking career of the subject of this sketch. He did some mining, but more prospecting, in Oregon, north, east and south, and in 1853 crossed into California. Here he mined for four or five years on Scott and Klamath Rivers, accumulating about $4,000. In 1858 he went into the business of freighting from Crescent City, Del Norte County, to the mines, which he followed two years, and then went to mining in Placer County for ten months. In the autumn of 1861 he came down to the Sacramento River and bought the ranch of 100 acres which he now owns on Grand Island, about twenty-five miles below Sacramento. Early in September of that year he made an arrangement with his brother, R. B., to take charge of the place and be half owner, leaving himself free to follow his bent for traveling, mining and prospecting. Accordingly by the middle of the month he was ready for the road, and was not again seen by his brother for more than fourteen years. He first went to Idaho, where he mined a year and “freighted” several years, with a net result of losing in one great storm all he had made in six years. He then went to mining again, and soon again to freighting in Montana and Oregon, and afterward to working for another in the same line for a few months. Finally, in company with some others, he set out for the far north. Wintering in 1869 on the headwaters of the Missouri, they traveled in the spring across the country to the head of the Columbia, then to the Fraser, which they crossed at the mouth of the Kanawl, then along the Russian telegraph line to Stewart Lake, then up the lake by boat to Lake Tattler, and again by land across the Rocky Mountains to Peace River, which they followed to Great Slave Lake, about 200 miles short of the shore of the Arctic Ocean. Here Mr. Hall spent two years prospecting, and then returned across Alaska, walking 250 miles over the snow to the head of Skene River, where the party, then about fifteen in number, built a boat and came down that river to Fort Essington at its mouth. In the spring of 1872 they came by a British steamer to Victoria, Vancouver Island, and thence to Puget Sound. Here Mr. Hall remained two years, and entered 160 acres, which he sold for $1,200, and returned to his home on Grand Island in 1876. Off again in 1879 he went to mining in Montana for three months and afterward superintended the construction of a stage road from Bonanza City to Blackford city, Utah, for ten months, and once more returned to Grand Island in the autumn of 1880, by way of Salt Lake City and Sacramento. Concluding to spend the remainder of his years under his own vine and fig-tree, he bought his brother’s half-interest in the ranch, and has since devoted his attention to its management. He has thirty acres in orchard and five in vineyard. He also raises some blooded stock, keeping eight or ten brood-mares and half as many shorthorn Durhams. Besides the extensive land travels already mentioned Mr. Hall has made a trip to Nevada, and half a dozen or more voyages from San Francisco to Puget Sound, on two of which he went as far as Alaska. In fact, he has been a land and sea rover, with brief intermissions, from 1852 to 1880, and may be said to have some claim to be regarded as the great American traveler of the third quarter of this century. He carries as a memorial of his mining days a $220 gold watch, the heavy cases of which he had made in San Francisco of the gold he had first gathered nearly forty years ago.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 651-652. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.