Born 1821, Rochester, New Hampshire
Died November 8, 1871, northwestern Greenland

British military officer Sir John Franklin led an expedition into the Canadian Arctic in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage: a northern water route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. When he and his men were never heard from again, several expeditions were sent out to learn their fate. The search parties would indirectly produce more discoveries about the Canadian Arctic. One such searcher was American Charles Francis Hall, whose polar journeys would lead him to sail farther north than any explorer before him. Hall’s adoption of Inuit (Eskimo) ways would also show future Arctic expeditions how to better survive the frigid region.

Hall was born in 1821 in Rochester, New Hampshire, the son of a blacksmith. Before finishing high school, he moved west, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. There he worked in the newspaper business...