Then Harriman quickly began buying stock in Northern Pacific with the aim of eventually gaining control over it. "A Gilded Age Businessman in Politics: James J. Hill, the Northwest, and the American Presidency, 1884-1912,", This page was last edited on 15 December 2022, at 06:08. As one of the trusts current officials, Robert Stein, testified last November, It was set up uniquely by James J. Hill as part of the political circumstances of the time to avoid a federal statute that was passed. With the end of the iron ore trust, any royalties that flow from the mines will now head in another direction. Hill County, Montana is named in his honor. Nearing the century mark, downtown St. Paul's James J. Hill Center to close in July. In 1870, he and his partners started the Red River Transportation Company, which offered steam boat transportation between St. Paul and Winnipeg. It was a fortuitous investment for them.. Born In: Eramosa Township, Ontario, Upper Canada, Spouse/Ex-: Mary Theresa Mehegan (m. 1867), children: Charlotte Hill Slade, Clara Hill Lindley, Gertrude Hill Gavin, James N. Hill, Katherine, Louis W. Hill, Mary Hill Hill, Rachel Hill Boeckmann, Ruth Hill Beard, Walter Jerome Hill, See the events in life of James J. Hill in Chronological Order, (Canadian-American railroad executive, Businessman). In 1867, Mary Theresa Mehegan, the daughter of Irish immigrants, wed James Jerome Hill, a Canadian immigrant who went on to achieve incredible success. ", 240 Summit Ave. Paul and Pacific Railroad. (photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society), Louis W. Hill, Jr., the grandson of James J. Hill, was the last living founder of the Great Northern Iron Ore Trust in St. Paul. James Jerome Hill was a Canadian-American railroad director. One of his challenges at this point was the avoidance of federal action against railroads. J. Hill was young, he moved to Kyiv, Ukraine when Hill born. In his room, in the southeast corner on the second floor of the brownstone house, overlooking the city to which he came sixty years ago as a clerk, the end came. (Photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society), A train carries iron ore at the U.S. Steel MinnTac mine in Mountain Iron, Minn., in 1981. From 1937 to 1951, Mr. Hill served in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Though a Protestant, Hill maintained a strong philanthropic relationship with the Catholic Church in St. Paul and through the northwest. Hill got what he wanted, and in January 1893 his Great Northern Railway, running from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington a distance of more than 1,700 miles (2,700 km) was completed. Thus, the knowledge he amassed in the academy was put to use in order to establish his business later in life. Under his management, StPM&M prospered. It operated agencies in Germany and Scandinavia that promoted its lands, and brought families over at low cost. Because of the size of this region and the economic dominance exerted by the Hill lines, Hill became known during his lifetime as "The Empire Builder". 2008 - 2022 INTERESTING.COM, INC. He was well-known for his blunt, direct manner, and many commented on his occasional flashes of humor. His philanthropy included generous gifts to colleges and universities, and prompt responses to victims of disasters, such as the sinking of the Titanic, the Hinckley fire, and the San Francisco earthquake. cameron mcinnes salary; May 21, 2022; Just one grandparent can lead you to many November 25-December 31, 2022. Husband of Mary T Hill and Mary Theresa Hill [27] The Hill library owns 75 shares. As a result, one feature Hill integrated into the construction of the 1887 company headquarters (the Great Northern General Office Building) was barrel vaulted ceilings constructed of brick and railroad steel rails that held up a layer of sand several inches deep. The Great Northern reached Seattle on January 7, 1893. Hill took drastic cost-saving measures to keep the Great Northern operating, but the pay cuts to railroad workers proved too much to bear. [14] Mary Hill died in 1922 and was buried next to her husband by the shore of Pleasant Lake on their North Oaks farm. [25] Hill had seen the devastation done downtown by the Great Chicago Fire. Jameson discovered the pass 1889 and it shortened the Great Northern's route by almost one hundred miles. 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. In September 1915, the first public loan, the $500,000,000 Anglo-French loan, was floated after negotiations with the Anglo-French Financial Commission. Concomitantly, the resulting trade in munitions with England and France carried the United States from a depression in 1914 to boom years in 1915 and 1916.[22]. By 1889, Hill decided that his future lay in expanding into a transcontinental railroad. He also ran model experimental farms in Minnesota such as North Oaks to develop superior livestock and crop yields for the settlers locating near his railroads. Hill did much of the route planning himself, travelling over proposed routes on horseback. James Hill was only fourteen years old when this demise occurred. It was a notable victory for the young labor organizer Eugene Debs (and occurred a few years before the more famous Pullman strike in Chicago) and marked a significant change in workers' rights. 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. Collecting the royalties required very little investment, beyond the initial price. Louis Hill Jr. was the last surviving founder of the Great Northern Iron Ore Trust. The task seemed impossible without government land grants. Although Great Northern and Northern Pacific were backed by J. P. Morgan and James J. Hill, the Union Pacific was backed not only by its president, Edward H. Harriman, but by the extremely powerful William Rockefeller and Jacob Schiff. His massive success kindled envy in many people as his story was a real-life rags-to-riches fairy tale. After the first punishing year of World War I, the Allied Powers desperately needed financial support to continue the war effort. They lived at 366 Summit Avenue in a home that is still standing. Call us at (858) 263-7716. Through this work, he learned all aspects of the freight and transportation business. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. 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. This business brought good profit in five folds by 1879, consolidating his monopoly in the anthracite coal industry. His two sons had to talk him into being interested in it in the first place, said Eileen R. McCormack, a Hill family biographer and former curator of the Hill papers. 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. The center, which opened in 1921 . His particular talents for English and mathematics would be helpful in his career. He was one of the key figures in moving the ore from the mines to the docks, she said. He was a voracious reader of nonfiction, although there are references to Hill lustily singing ballads based on the poems of Robert Burns. James J. Hill's son and grandson, Louis Hill and Louis Hill Jr., photographed in 1917. For three years, Hill researched the StP&P and finally concluded that it would be possible to make a good deal of money off the StP&P, provided that the initial capital could be found. Paul and Pacific Railroad encountered huge losses and was bankrupt. [8] Hill moved on without the benefit of a central company, and acquired the Colorado and Southern Railway lines into Texas. In 1959, Hill High in St. Paul, Minnesota, was established as a school from the funds set aside from Hill's wife for education. James J. Hill was known as the "Empire Builder" for his work in founding and developing the Great Northern Railway from a local railroad serving Minnesota to a major transcontinental network connecting Chicago to Seattle.[1][2]. He wrote that by 1946, that single mine had produced 40 million tons of iron ore and generated $37 million in freight revenue for the railroad and $22.5 million in royalties that flowed into the trust. Meanwhile, some of the original mines are still being worked. It was in the season of winter that the Mississippi River froze and trading via steamboats was hindered. Over the next two decades, he worked relentlessly to push the line north to Canada and then west across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. He also built the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. 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. The 1887 building was converted between 2000 and 2004 to a 53 unit condo in the Historic Lowertown District of St. What was initially considered Hills folly by many turned into his biggest success. Morgan, acting on behalf of his friend, ordered his men to buy everything they could get their hands on. Hill undertook to establish a monopoly of the steamboat business; he was monopolizing coal, socializing with bankers, and buying other businesses at the same time. Built at a cost of $930,000 and with 36,000 square feet (3,300 m2), the James J. Hill House was among the city's largest. Mr. Hill will be resting at the Mackey Funeral Home, 33 Peel Street, Lindsay on Friday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Funeral service in the chapel on Saturday, May 31st at 10:00 a.m. Interment at Riverside Cemetery, Lindsay. Renamed the Great Northern Railway in 1890, it remained the "great adventure" of Hills life. James J. Hill is back in the news this month but not for his famous railroad. His ability to ride out the depression garnered him fame and admiration. An enthusiastic conservationist, Hill was invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to a governor's conference on conservation of natural resources, and later appointed to a lands commission. "He had everything going against him, yet he built this empire," he said. Hills Great Northern, McCormack added, profited on all sides, from the ore itself, and the transporting of it by rail to Duluth, and then by ship because it went on Hills ships. That handoff has been the subject of a dispute in Ramsey County District Court, mostly about the timing of the handover. The main room of the James J. Hill Center in downtown St. Paul on Tuesday, June 11, 2019. The 14-story building cost $14 million to construct. "Minnesota, Death Records, 1866-1916," index and database. So the legacy of the Empire Builder is still around and goes far beyond what is now known as the BNSF Railway, or Hills most personal emblem, the massive stone mansion on St. Pauls Summit Avenue. Egil and Rachel had two daughters, Mary and Gertrude. James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 - May 29, 1916), was a Canadian-American railroad executive. Near the end of his life, Hill played what a recent biographer, Albro Martin, called his "last and greatest role." 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. An enthusiastic conservationist, Hill was invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to a governors' conference on conservation of natural resources, and later appointed to a lands commission. As with his business dealings, Hill supervised the construction and design himself, hiring and firing several architects in the process. [14], In 1893, Hill began the process of looking for a source of labor other than Chinese workers. It was at this point that Hill became the official president of StPM&M (not that he hadn't been the man behind the curtain before), and decided to expand the rail lines. Northern Pacific stock was forced up to $1,000 per share. By 1860, he was working for wholesale grocers, for whom he handled freight transfers, especially dealing with railroads and steamboats. Richter said Hill came to the West with nothing more than $200 and a physical disability. In The Great Gatsby, Hill is the man whom Gatsby's father says Gatsby would have equalled if he had lived long enough. "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.". He died in 1995, setting off the 20-year timtabkle that led to dissolution of the Trust in 2015. The result was chaos on Wall Street. 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. She was the daughter of an Irish immigrant and was a pious catholic. [8] 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. The Great Northern bought its lands from the federal governmentit received no land grantsand resold them to farmers at cheap prices. 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. 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. Concomitantly, the resulting trade in munitions with England and France carried the United States from a depression in 1914 to boom years in 1915 and 1916. By the time he had finished, he was adept at math, land surveying, and English. Upon completion of the Summit Avenue residence, Hill had the family's old house, which he had constructed in 1878, razed. [11] This "Dakota Boom" peaked in 1882 as 42,000 immigrants, largely from northern Europe, poured into the Red River Valley running through the region. In 1867, James J. Hill married Mary Theresa Mehegan, born in 1846 in New York City. In May 1879, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway Co. (StPM&M) formedwith James J. Hill as general manager. Many speculators, who had sold Northern Pacific "short" in the anticipation of a drop in the railroad's price, faced ruin. Under his management, StPM&M prospered. A New Mexico man is charged with killing and decapitating a 51-year-old man at a local park Sunday then kicking the severed head around, according to a report . Built at a cost of $930,000 and with 36,000 square feet (3,300m2), the James J. Hill House was among the city's largest. Opened as the James . - Eramosa Township, Ontario, Canada, May 29 1916 - Saint Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, USA. Over 400 workers labored on the project. The Hills shrewdly included a group of children among the founders, insuring the trust would last a very long time. On March 14, the Northern Securities Company was ordered to be dissolved under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Some mines were already operating, and Hills sons were excited by the potential. His first goal was to expand and upgrade even more. The key to the Great Northern line was Hill's use of the previously unmapped Marias Pass first discovered by Santiago Jameson. Hill avoided this by investing a large portion of the railroad's profit back into the railroad itselfand charged those investments to operating expense. When he was looking for the best path for one of his tracks to take, he went on horseback and scouted it personally. But he isnt front and center.. In order to generate business for his railroad, Hill encouraged European immigrants to settle along his line, often paying for Russian and Scandinavian settlers to travel from Europe. Hill was known to be blunt with occasional humour. Schonberger, Howard. Gertrude married Peter Harvie Ffolliott in 1942. http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/sv000012.xml. 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. 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. Hill's leadership became a case study in the successful management of a capital-intensive business during the economic downturn. [19] After falling into a coma, he died in his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 29, 1916. He came to St. Paul in 1856, where he first worked as a shipping clerk for J. W. Bass and Company. Cook St. Paul is no more. Theres really no other trust like it., Yet there was another reason, at a time of rising public resentment toward wealthy industrialists and grim conditions at the mines. In 1880, its net worth was $728,000; in 1885 it was $25,000,000. Louis Jr. was just 4 years old when the trust was created. "What we want," Hill is quoted as saying, "is the best possible line, shortest distance, lowest grades, and least curvature we can build. Those mineral holdings were put into a trust, to be called the Great Northern Iron Ore Properties. Learn about the life and legacy of this railroad executive who was a pivotal force in the transformation of the Northwest, earning the name The Empire Builder.. With his astute judgments and haggling skills, he managed to recover it from bankruptcy and even expanded the rails. They were married for 49 years and had 10 children. The Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific tried to merge four times, in 1896, 1901, 1927, and 1955. [1] He was forced to leave school in 1852 due to the death of his father. A portrait of James J. Hill is now hung in the library in his home. 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. Samuel Hill was an executive at the Great Northern Railway when he married Mary Hill. Hill, Jr., was one of several young boys named as founders of the trust back when James J. Hill was alive, to keep the trust going for many years. The Union Pacific Railroad was the biggest competitor of Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads. The Hill family has shared some of that wealth with St. Paul and the region, through foundations that continue to this day. [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. Neither side could win a distinct advantage, and the parties soon realized that a truce would have to be called. The 14-story building cost $14 million to construct. His discernment and flexibility at the time of grave financial losses were tremendous. He loved reading and also took to poetry. Folks already knew the region had iron ore. They had ten children: By early 1916 Hill began pouring more attention into philanthropy, donating thousands of dollars to various institutions as he privately struggled with a variety of increasingly painful ailments. His condition deteriorated quickly in mid-May, but even with the help of many respected doctors he was beyond saving. Geni requires JavaScript! Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. 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