Frances Hall

Francis Hall (1822–1902) was an upstate New York book dealer who went to Japan in 1859 and became the founder of Walsh, Hall and Co., America's leading trading house in 19th-century Japan. Hall served as Japan correspondent for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, publishing nearly 70 articles in the Tribune. While in Japan he kept a detailed journal that has become a major source on life in Japan during the middle of the 19th century. Having made a fortune in trade between Japan and the United States he returned home in 1866 and became a philanthropist and world traveler. Early life Francis (Frank) Hall was born the sixth son in a family of sixteen children in Ellington Connecticut on October 27, 1822. His father, John Hall (1783–1847), a Yale graduate (1802), founded one of the nation's premiere preparatory academies, the Ellington School, in 1829. The Ellington School continued until 1839 when the elder Hall retired. But the family's role in education was continued by Frank's older brother, Edward, who established the Hall Family School for Boys in 1844. This was an exclusive school that took no more than twelve students annually. Years later, in 1872, Frank Hall was instrumental in sending Iwasaki Yanosuke, the man who came to head the Mitsubishi Corporation and later the Baron Iwasaki, to his brother's school in Ellington. Hall graduated from the Ellington School in 1838. The financial panic of 1837 made it impossible for him to attend Yale, so he took up a career of teaching school. By 1842 he had given up teaching and moved to Elmira, New York, where he opened the town's first book store. Hall became a successful book dealer and a cultural figure in the community. In 1846 he married Sarah Covell the daughter of Miles Covell one of Elmira's most prominent citizens. Unfortunately, Sarah died two years later in 1848. Troubled by his wife's death, Hall thought of leaving Elmira, but could find no buyer for his store. For the next decade he busied himself in the life of the community and served for a time as the elected president of the Board of Trustees of Elmira, which was the equivalent of serving as mayor of the city. Travel to Japan In 1859, after selling his business to his two brothers Frederic and Charles C., Hall decided to join Samuel Robbins Brown, Guido Verbeck, and Duane B. Simmons, three Dutch Reformed Board missionaries, on a trip to Japan.