Born in Warrenton, Mississippi, and raised in Charleston, Illinois, Horace Mark “Hod” Hall (1854-1945) was the son of dentist Dr. Jesse C. Hall and brother of Bill, Clarence, and Sylvia Hall. In 1871, with his friend Will Denman, Hod Hall moved to Abilene, Kansas, where they met the town marshal, Wild Bill Hickock. Samuel Johnson, a cattle dealer from Blanco County, Texas, and later grandfather of President Lyndon B. Johnson, hired the two men for a cattle drive to Johnson’s ranch in what is now Johnson City, Texas. After several months working as ranch hands for Johnson, Denman left to study medicine in Illinois. Hall stayed behind, urging his father and brother Bill to join him. Unfortunately, he eventually contracted a fever, possibly typhoid, and his mother came to care for him and took him back to Charleston. After recovering he taught school for several years, before earning an M.D. from Chicago’s Northwester University College of Medicine in 1883. He had two sons, Jesse M. and Joseph S. Hall and practiced medicine all over the United States, including Seattle, Washington, Butte, Montana, and Los Angeles, California, where he died.
Source:
Hall, Joseph S. Horace M. Hall’s Letters from Gillespie County, Texas, 1871-1873. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 62(3): January 1959, pp. 336-355.
From the guide to the Hall (Horace Mark) Papers 1960., 1871-1957, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)
