Book of the Week (12/18/2023)

Joseph Seavey Hall (1818-1899): Pioneer of Mountain Tourism by Annie Gibavic (Bondcliff Books, 2023)

Bartlett, New Hampshire, native Joseph Seavey Hall, an early promoter of tourism in the White Mountains, was a mountaineer, a road builder, an adventurer, and a great story teller. Living in a day and age when travel was never easy, Hall’s entrepreneurial spirit took him all across the United States, from Mount Washington in New Hampshire to Mount Diablo in California; to Vermont’s unspoiled Northeast Kingdom; and from clearing land for a new settlement in Frankfort, Michigan, to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the Civil War. Told through the correspondence of his third wife, Calista Fay Hall, (Aunt Kitty), and his nieces Alice Hall Walter and Mabel Hall Walter, Joseph Seavey Pioneer of Mountain Tourism, chronicles the fascinating coast-to-coast story of his long and industrious life. --Publisher's blurb