journey across the prairies to Iowa was made in company with the family of Jacob Greider. Four wagons with two teams of horses and two yoke of oxen were required to transport the various members of the party and their household effects. The journey was made in comparative ease and without incident of any moment until they had reached Iowa City but very shortly thereafter cholera broke out among the party and one of their members died and was laid to rest nine miles this side of Marengo. They continued their journey, however, until within two miles of Grinnell, when they were compelled to go into camp for about three weeks and when they resumed their march they left behind them in the little cemetery Amos Hall, brother of our subject, and Mary Greider. During this time the care of the horses and stock devolved upon Mr. Hall and Thomas Edgars, a boy of the party, and they were indeed busy as well as sad days. Arriving in Story county they located in Indian Creek township, one mile northeast of Maxwell, where Thomas Hall bought two hundred acres of unimproved land, which he immediately began to cultivate. Here on the 22d of February, 1879, he passed away at the age of sixty-nine years, having been born on the 29th of May, 1810. Mrs. Hall survived him for four years and on the 27th day of January, 1883, she died, having passed the seventy-second milestone in the cycle of life, being born on the 11th of January, 1811. They were the parents of eight children, six of whom survive, four of them being over seventy years of age. The surviving children are as follows: Mary Jane, the widow of Augustus Berlin, of Ottawa, Kansas; John R., of Maxwell, Iowa; James H., of Maxwell; William C., of Golden Prairie, Wyoming; Thomas, of Bagley, Iowa; and our subject.
Mr. Hall was reared at home and living in the country in pioneer days his educational advantages were very limited; his schooling being confined to the brief sessions of the district school, which were held in a log building with puncheon floor and slab benches.
He left the parental roof at the age of nineteen years in order to establish a home for himself, having been united in marriage on the 29th of November, 1855, to Miss Margaret Felkner, of Kosciusko county, Indiana. For fifteen years he farmed as a renter but in 1862 he removed to Indiana, locating on the farm of his uncle in Kosciusko county, where he remained until the fall of 1868. He then returned to Story county and purchased eighty acres of land on section 23, Indian Creek township, on which he located in 1871. Later he added to his holdings, forty acres at one time and ten at another, until his farm contained one hundred and thirty acres. The land was unimproved when he bought it but in 1871 he erected a house on it and added other improvements until at the time of his retirement, twenty years later, it was one of the best farms in that section. In 1891 Mr. and Mrs. Hall removed to Maxwell, where they still reside, and the following year they sold the farm to their son-in-law, Charles Porter.
Five children were born to them. Nancy E. is the wife of Charles Porter, of Indian Creek township, Rosetta is the wife of Samuel Miller, of