No one is satisfied with an incomplete story. The very meagre and inconsistent accounts of the adventures of Sylvia and Rachel Hall (familiarly known as the “Hall girls”) heretofore published, merely excited one’s curiosity to know the whole story. The ladies’ statements that have been published, gave only an outline of the facts as far as they knew them personally. To obtain all the facts, required much investigation of books and a great deal of correspondence with historical societies, editors of newspapers and the War and the Interior Department of the United States. Also, the writer has had personal interviews with relatives of the Misses Hall, and has traveled over the ground and examined all the evidence that now appears from the location of the little cottage on Indian Creek to Galena where the girls took a boat for St. Louis.

Mrs. A. Miranda Dunavan, a daughter of Mrs. Rachel Hall Munson (the younger captive), gave me the family history of her mother; and Miss Sylvia E. Horn of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Mr. C. L. Horn of Mackinaw, Illinois. grand-children of Mrs. Sylvia Hall Horn (the elder captive), contributed the history of the Horn family. Thus every fact in the following pages is stated upon the best evidence.

To gather all the traditions that still linger along the course over which the Indians traveled with their captives, the writer enlisted the services of his nieces, Miss Gertrude Scanlan of Fennimore, Wisconsin, and Miss Marian Scanlan of Prairie du Chien, whose grandfathers were pioneers in the lead regions. However, no fact has been stated on tradition without the clues being verified by land records or government documents.

Of course every lady wants to know how the girls looked. Unfortunately, there is no picture of either of them prior to middle life. Mrs. Dunavan lent to me a very rare daguerreotype picture of her mother, Mrs. Munson, taken at the age of about forty-two years, and a photograph of her aunt, Mrs. Sylvia Hall Horn, taken when she was over sixty years of age. Also, I borrowed from Mrs. Dunavan a tintype picture of herself when she was sixteen, which is said to be a very good likeness of her aunt Sylvia at the time that she was taken captive. These pictures are reproduced herein. The tradition of the neighborhood is that the girls were unusually handsome in both figure and face and of captivating kind dispositions. They were born in Kentucky and carried with them to Illinois the southern culture which has won for the ladies of the South considerable fame in story and song.

Milwaukee, Wis.
July 15, 1915.
CHARLES M. SCANLAN.