Charles Francis Hall

Charles Francis Hall (1821 – November 8, 1871) was an American Arctic explorer. Little is known of Hall's early life. He was born in the state of Vermont, but while he was still a child his family moved to Rochester, New Hampshire, where, as a boy, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith. In the 1840s he married and drifted westward, arriving in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1849. There he went into business making seals and engraving plates, and later began to publish two small newspapers, The Cincinnati Occasional and The Daily Press.