Today, that fortune would be worth upward of $3 billion . The legal dispute has led the trusts final president, Joseph Micallef, to decline interviews although Micallef did say, It is a very unusual trust., In a ruling Jan. 26, 2015, Judge Margaret Marrinan sided with the trust. Yet, he was adamant to build the straightest route, with the shortest distance across the Northwest. This last attempt lasted from 1955 until final United States Supreme Court approval and merger in March, 1970, which created the Burlington Northern Railroad. After working as a clerk in Kentucky (during which he learned bookkeeping), Hill decided to permanently move to the United States and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the age of 18. Schonberger, Howard. From 1937 to 1951, Mr. Hill served in the Minnesota House of Representatives. It was obtained by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1978 and today is operated as a museum and gallery. He began his career in transportation in 1856 as a 17-year-old clerk on the St. Paul levee. Hill did much of the route planning himself, travelling over proposed routes on horseback. Asked about the trusts public profile there, historian Brunfelt laughed and replied, None.. "Minnesota, Death Records, 1866-1916," index and database. In 1873, he entered the steamboat business and by 1879 he had a local monopoly by merging (with Norman Kittson). Father of Marie Francis Hill; James Norman Hill; Louis Warren Hill; Clara Anne Lindley; Charlotte Elizabeth Slade and 5 others; Gertrude T Gavin; Walter Jerome Hill; Katherine Hill died young; Ruth Heidsieck and Rachel Boeckmann less He imported grains from Russia and sold this to farmers. After 20 years working in the shipping business on the Mississippi and Red rivers, Hill and several other investors purchased the nearly bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1878. They were married for 49 years and had 10 children. At the start, it took the Hill family a few years to fully explore and understand what they owned. Largest Database of New Mexico Mugshots. In honour of his legacy, his heirs founded the James J. Hill Reference Library, which provides practical business information to businesses in the entire nation. The Great Northern was the first transcontinental built without public money and just a few land grants and was one of the few transcontinental railroads not to go bankrupt. His discernment and flexibility at the time of grave financial losses were tremendous. Nearing the century mark, downtown St. Paul's James J. Hill Center to close in July. The Union Pacific Railroad was the biggest competitor of Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads. It was obtained by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1978 and today is operated as a museum and gallery. The house has many early electrical and mechanical systems that predate widespread adoption in modern domestic structures. This incident however did not cause much hindrance in his future career. Hill was a supporter of free trade and was one of the few supporters of free trade with Canada. At the peak of his success he met with the disapproval of President Theodore Roosevelt for his railway monopoly. Hill sent Mary to finishing school in Milwaukee before their marriage in 1867 to prepare her for the impending change of stature in her life. Instead, it's for his lesser-known role as an iron ore magnate. Through this work, he learned all aspects of the freight and transportation business. Therefore, Hill turned to his confidant and esteemed financer J.P Morgan. As it turned out, Hill had personally bought the great Mahoning mine, the motherlode that would feed Americas steel age and play major roles during two World Wars. In 1959, Hill High in St. Paul, Minnesota, was established as a school from the funds set aside from Hill's wife for education. In 1867, James J. Hill married Mary Theresa Mehegan, born in 1846 in New York City. James Hill is managed by the Canada Project. James J. Hill. Unlike the railroad, the trust rarely drew much attention. James Jerome Hill was a Canadian-American railroad director. In rare moments away from work, Hill devoted himself to amassing an impressive collection of French landscape painting showcased in the two-story art gallery of his Summit Avenue mansion. Upon completion of the Summit Avenue residence, Hill had the family's old house, which he had constructed in 1878, razed. He was the only businessman to make a hefty profit even during the time of depression. Funding provided by the State of Minnesota, the Legacy Amendment through the vote of Minnesotans on Nov. 4, 2008, and our generous donors and members. During the winter months when the Mississippi River was frozen and steamboats could not run, Hill started bidding on other contracts and won several. [2], Because of his previous experiences in shipping and fuel supply, Hill was able to enter both the coal and steamboat businesses. The school, which was all-male, consolidated in 1971 with the all-female Archbishop Murray School to form Hill-Murray School in Maplewood, Minnesota. Hills son Louis persuaded him to buy it, Brunfelt said. The James J. Hill House in St. Paul, is a National Historic Landmark.[24]. After the first punishing year of World War I, the Allied Powers desperately needed financial support to continue the war effort. Part of Hill's success during the depression also was due to repeatedly cutting his employees' wages, although this was during a time of deflation when prices were falling generally. Between 1856 and 1859 he prospered in a series of wood and coal merchandising partnerships. Much of his collection is hanging in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the majority of pieces having been donated by his heirs. He didnt seem to have a large interest in getting land along the railroad, or (investing) in any of the speculation or the business activities along the railroad.. Under his management, StPM&M prospered. His particular talents for English and mathematics would be critical later in his life. In 1891, after three years of building, construction was completed on Hill's new family home at 240 Summit Avenue in St. Paul. They had ten children: He died in his home in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 29, 1916. That ore movement was absolutely critical. With 1901 and the start of the new century, James Hill now had control of both the Great Northern Railway, and the Northern Pacific (which he had obtained with the help of his friend J. P. Morgan, when that railroad went bankrupt in the depression of the mid-1890s). But as the decades pass, the legacy has become harder to see. They frequently entertained Rachel's parents at their home and Rachel and her daughters lived at 240 Summit for a few years ca 1918-1922. Hill's heirs established the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul,[26] which is considered by the Small Business Administration the premier source for publicly accessible practical business information in the United States, and many SBA programs rely on the Hill Library's HillSearch service to provide business information resources to small businesses nationwide. Husband of Mary T Hill and Mary Theresa Hill In May 1879, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway Co. (StPM&M) formedwith James J. Hill as general manager. He loved reading and also took to poetry. The result was chaos on Wall Street. In 1867, James J. Hill married Mary Theresa Mehegan, born in 1846 in New York City. Louis Warren Hill (May 19, 1872- April 27, 1948), was an American railroad executive. 651-297-2555 Conoco-Phillips wanted to get the property immediately on April 7, 2015, but the trustees argued that winding up the trusts affairs would take until 2016. Mary Hill was long active in St. Paul's Catholic community. The 14-story building cost $14 million to construct. In 1887, the Great Northern's first company headquarters building was constructed in St. Paul. Two years later, Hill wrote a $2 million personal check half the purchase price for 25,000 acres of logged-off land, which had a small rail line to Hibbing for carrying logs. J. J. Hill Dead In St. Paul Home At The Age of 77. When he was looking for the best path for one of his tracks to take, he went on horseback and scouted it personally. Find great deals and sell your items for free. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Hill avoided this by investing a large portion of the railroad's profit back into the railroad itselfand charged those investments to operating expense. Hill was intimately involved in the planning and construction (19141916) of a new company headquarters in St. Paul (to be known as the Great Northern Office Building), which was to house the corporate staffs of the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific and Hill's banking enterprises. But it collected a lot of royalties, more than $500 million over its long lifetime. Because of these measures, Hill not only stayed in business, but also increased the net worth of his railroad by nearly $10,000,000 (equal to $301,592,593 today). hillhouse@mnhs.org He was soon made the General Manager of the newly formed St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway Co. Hill recruited hundreds of immigrants and developed mini homesteads in Dakota and Montana that helped in building markets; he used the railways as a means of commuting immigrants from one place to another. It was a bitter blow to Hill, and the decision marked the role the federal government would often take in breaking up corporate monopolies in the 20th century. He also contributed to the establishment of Marquette University School of Medicine. The 1893 depression saw the collapse of many businesses, including railroads, throughout the United States. And it began with Hills hunger to build a rail line across northern Minnesota in the 1890s, to haul grain more directly from the Red River Valley to Lake Superior. During the late 1880s,he aimed to build a rail route through the Rockies to the Pacific. The Hill Family In 1867, Mary Theresa Mehegan, the daughter of Irish immigrants, wed James Jerome Hill, a Canadian immigrant who went on to achieve incredible success. At the end of his life, Hill was asked by a newspaper reporter to reveal the secret of his success. In St. Paul, the city's main library building and the adjoining Hill Business Library were funded by him. Richter thinks that James Hill's story is an important one not only because of his success, but also because of the odds his success was won against. The pass had been discovered by John Frank Stevens, principal engineer of the Great Northern Railway, in December 1889, and offered an easier route across the Rockies than that taken by the Northern Pacific. In The Great Gatsby, Hill is the man whom Gatsby's father says Gatsby would have equalled if he had lived long enough. Have you taken a DNA test? He also took strong measures to economizein just one year, Hill cut the railway's expense of carrying a ton of freight by thirteen percent. Hill's historic home is located next to the cathedral, largely due to the special relationship Hill's wife, a practicing Catholic, had with the Diocese. [14], In 1893, Hill began the process of looking for a source of labor other than Chinese workers. The Hill Library has developed numerous online programs and now serves millions of small business owners worldwide. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and Pacific Northwest. Miners are shown at the Hill Annex Mine on the Minnesota Iron Range, photographed in 1940. Having done community building through foundation work and governmental work, he found another way to build a community by creating the unique North . A portrait of James J. Hill is now hung in the library in his home. discoveries. With the return of prosperity and the wave of trust-building and consolidation in the late 1890s, Hills problem became one of how to retain control of his vast railroad holdings. Paul. Search arrest records and find latests mugshots and bookings for Misdemeanors and Felonies. James is 18 degrees from Margaret Atwood, 19 degrees from Jim Carrey, 20 degrees from Elsie Knott, 21 degrees from Gordon Lightfoot, 23 degrees from Alton Parker, 19 degrees from Beatrice Tillman, 17 degrees from Jenny Trout, 20 degrees from Justin Trudeau, 23 degrees from Edwin Boyd, 18 degrees from Barbara Hanley, 27 degrees from Fanny Rosenfeld and 20 degrees from Cathryn Hondros on our single family tree. Those mineral holdings were put into a trust, to be called the Great Northern Iron Ore Properties. Constantly updated. To that end, Hill was a major figure in the effort launched by J.P. Morgan to float the Anglo-French Bond drive of 1915, which allowed the Allies to purchase much-needed foodstuffs and other supplies. [12] The rapidly increasing settlement in North Dakota's Red River Valley along the Minnesota border between 1871 and 1890 was a major example of large-scale "bonanza" farming. (Photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society), A train carries iron ore at the U.S. Steel MinnTac mine in Mountain Iron, Minn., in 1981. Folks already knew the region had iron ore. Jim Hill Mountain near Stevens Pass in the Cascade Range is named after him, also. The StP&P in particular was caught in an almost hopeless legal muddle. Hill did much of the route planning himself, traveling over proposed routes on horseback. Hill was a hands-on, detail-obsessed manager. "When we are all dead and gone," he said, "the sun will still shine, the rain will fall, and this railroad will run as usual.". For decades, much of Minnesotas Mesabi Range was owned by a St. Paul-based trust that Hill and his partners created in 1906. By the time he had finished, he was adept at math, land surveying, and English. Unfortunately for the Hill-Morgan alliance, on the same day they formed the Northern Securities Company, President William McKinley was assassinated, placing Theodore Rooseveltthe "trust-buster"in the office of President. Map | Directions and Parking. The Hills shrewdly included a group of children among the founders, insuring the trust would last a very long time. Sep 16 1838 - Eramosa Township, Upper Canada, British North America, May 29 1916 - Saint Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, United States, James Jerome Hill, Ann Hill (born Dunbar), Sep 16 1838? (photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society). Between 1883 and 1889, Hill built his railroads across Minnesota, into Wisconsin, and across North Dakota to Montana. During this period, Hill began to work for himself for the first time. The skill of book-keeping he had acquired as a clerk at Kentucky, before moving to Minnesota helped augment his knowledge and had landed him this job. Though a Protestant, Hill maintained a strong philanthropic relationship with the Catholic Church in St. Paul and throughout the northwest. At the end of his life, Hill was asked by a newspaper reporter to reveal the secret of his success. Hill also invested in founding schools and churches for these communities and promoted a variety of progressive techniques to ensure they prospered. If the federal government believed that the railroads were making too much profit, they might see this as an opportunity to force lowering of the railway tariff rates. He attended the Rockwood Academy for a short while, where the head gave him free tuition. The most famous home of the first construction boom was the James J. Hill House, built in 1891 in Richardsonian Romanesque style on the site of the original Edward Duffield Neill home.Owned by James. In 1867, Mary Theresa Mehegan, the daughter of Irish immigrants, wed James Jerome Hill, a Canadian immigrant who went on to achieve incredible success. When there was not enough industry in the areas Hill was building, Hill brought the industry in, often by buying out a company and placing plants along his railroad lines. The Hills maintained close ties with Archbishop John Ireland, and Hill was a major contributor to the Saint Paul Seminary, Macalester College, Hamline University, the University of St. Thomas, Carleton College, and other educational, religious and charitable organizations. Hillsboro, North Dakota; Hill County, Montana; and Hillyard, Washington[23] (now a neighborhood of Spokane), are named for him. At nine, he started receiving formal education.His father could not afford to pay his school fees, but a benevolent head master at the Rockwood Academy let him receive free education. Near the end of his life, Hill played what a recent biographer, Albro Martin, called his "last and greatest role." Hill saved money by repeatedly cutting wages, made possible by a time of deflation when prices were falling generally. The move was politically unpopular and in clear violation of Minnesota statutes. Because Hill created a property-holding trust, it had to follow laws insuring that property is controlled by the living, not the dead. In a way, they kind of fell into the biggest, most valuable property on the Range, said Pam Brunfelt, an Iron Range historian. Said Brunfelt, the Iron Range historian, The Great Northern (Railway) is one of the great success stories in American history, the only transcontinental railroad built by an individual, which is astonishing when you think of it. This ended Hill's ability to maintain competitive rates in Asian countries and in the subsequent two years American trade with Japan and China dropped 40% (or $41 million). 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