Jackson was born in Keeseville, New York, on April 4, 1843,[REF][REF] the first of seven children born to George Hallock Jackson and Harriet Maria Allen.
In 1866 Jackson boarded a Union Pacific Railroad train and traveled until it reached the end of the line at that time, about one hundred miles west of Omaha, Nebraska, where he then joined a wagon train heading west to Great Salt Lake as a bullwhacker, on the Oregon Trail.