Scope and Contents:
This collection contains land grant certificates, deeds, indentures, and other documents pertaining to the Hall family, a leading early DeWitt County family and founders of Hallsville, Illinois. Several certificates and indentures record the land purchases of Mahlon Hall and his son Henry H. Hall, as they built up the family's considerable land holdings in DeWitt and Macon Counties. Other materials in the collection detail the life of Jonathan R. Hall, another son of Mahlon, who was elected DeWitt County Judge in 1869.
Marie Putman Carden, Karl F. Putman, and John H. Putman donated the collection to the Library in 2004. The documents were previously the property of their parents, Dale and Ruth Putman, who ran the Putman Bookstore in Bloomington, Illinois, from 1934 to 1994.