John Hailey: Stage Line Pioneer, Stockman and Idaho's First Historian

Who was John Hailey?

John Hailey was born August 29, 1835, in Smith County, Tennessee, and died in Boise on April 10, 1921, at 85. Over those years he fought in an Oregon war, ran a stage line, raised livestock, represented Idaho Territory in Congress and wrote a history of the state. The Hall of Great Westerners biography calls him an early pioneer and politician and records his 1958 induction.

He is often called Uncle John Hailey in Idaho histories, but the sources we opened use his plain name, so we use it here.

From Tennessee to Oregon

Hailey's family moved to Missouri in 1848, and in 1853 he went west to Oregon. He enlisted as a private when the Rogue River Indian War broke out in 1855 and was later promoted to lieutenant. That war was fought over Native land in southern Oregon and shaped the settlement that followed. On August 7, 1856, he married Louisa M. Griffin in Jackson County, Oregon; they had six children.

After the war he raised livestock and farmed. In 1862 he moved to Washington Territory, where, according to the Wikipedia article on Hailey, he worked in agriculture, stock raising and mining.

The stage line to the Boise Basin

The City of Boise's pioneer cemetery tour describes his freight and passenger business. In 1863 Hailey set up a saddle and pack train route from the Columbia River to the Boise Basin mines, and in 1864 he added a stage line over the same route. He also ran a line with William Ish from Umatilla, Oregon, to the Boise Basin and extended it to Ogden, Utah. He sold the business in 1870.

Those lines served the gold camps of the Boise Basin, so he was supplying a mining boom rather than a cattle one. His stock raising ran alongside, and he resumed farming, stock raising and mining after his time in Congress, as the city's biography of Hailey notes.

Delegate to Congress and public servant

Hailey was elected mayor of Boise in 1871 but never took office. He served as Idaho Territory's delegate to Congress from March 4, 1873, to March 3, 1875, and declined renomination in 1874. He was elected again to the 49th Congress, serving from 1885 to 1887, and lost reelection in 1886.

He also served as Ada County commissioner and president of the Idaho Territorial Council, and he was warden of the Idaho State Penitentiary from 1899 to 1901.

Idaho's first historian

When the Idaho State Historical Society was founded in 1907, Hailey became its first secretary and librarian, and the city of Boise says he was its first director until his death. In 1910, at the legislature's request, he wrote a History of Idaho. A man who had lived through the territory's mining camps and elections was writing down what he saw.

Visit or learn more

The city of Hailey, Idaho, is named for him, and he is buried in Boise's Masonic Burial Ground, part of the city's pioneer cemetery walking tour. For more on stockmen of the Northwest, see the ranching section of farm.FM and a farm.FM story about Idaho pioneers.