Frank Hall 1836 - 1917
5 books in the catalogue, published 2008.
Frank Hall (1836 to 1917) was a Colorado public official and the author of the first large history of the state. He served as Secretary of Colorado Territory from 1866 to 1874, and later set down what he had gathered in a four volume history printed between 1889 and 1895. Western Reflections Publishing carries five listings of that work: each of the four volumes, plus a four volume set.
About Frank Hall
The Online Books Page dates Hall's life 1836 to 1917. The Political Graveyard lists him as Secretary of Colorado Territory, 1866 to 1874. A letter in his papers at History Colorado, dated February 4, 1874 and written by a private secretary to President Grant, tells him he is no longer to be territorial secretary. The same collection holds letters Hall wrote to his mother, Emma Skidmore Low, five scrapbooks and incoming letters from Schuyler Colfax, Jerome Chaffee and Nathaniel P. Hill.
In the introduction to his fourth volume, Hall writes that in June 1887 he engaged to prepare four volumes of 500 to 700 pages each, and that he finished them after eight years of labor. The books were published in Chicago by The Blakely Printing Company for the Rocky Mountain Historical Company, and the Online Books Page also lists a 1906 treatise by Hall on gold mines titled Gathering Gold.
Books
History of the State of Colorado Volume I
The opening volume, from Spanish entradas and the cliff dwellers through the gold rush, territory and Civil War to Union Colony in 1872. It is the narrative foundation for the rest.
History of the State of Colorado Four Volume Set
All four volumes together, for libraries and serious readers who want the full run from the Spanish explorers to the 1890s without assembling it piece by piece.
History of the State of Colorado Volume II
A volume that begins with geology and coal, then covers the early 1870s, statehood, the railroad war between the Santa Fe and Rio Grande, and Leadville.
History of the State of Colorado Volume III
Politics, banking, newspapers and the Denver and Rio Grande, a criminal calendar with Alfred Packer, and a dozen county histories that serve as handy reference.
History of the State of Colorado Volume IV
The closing volume: political annals to 1890, a history of Denver, the remaining counties and a large biographical department of the generation that built the state.
What the books share
Everything Hall wrote for us concerns one subject, the making of Colorado. The four volumes follow it in order: Spanish exploration and the cliff dwellers, the fur trade and the 1859 rush, territorial politics and the Civil War, railroads, statehood, Leadville and the silver era, and finally the counties and the people of the 1890s. Hall mixes narrative with reference matter, so the books read as both a story and a work to consult. He relies on first-hand accounts from early settlers and on records recovered by the State Historical Society.
The subjects this author is catalogued under. Open Library record.
Good to know
Who was Frank Hall?
How many Hall listings does Western Reflections carry?
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