George Elbridge Hill, Jr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hill_(Idaho_politician)

George Elbridge Hill (October 26, 1868 – May 6, 1958) was a Democratic politician from Idaho. He served as the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Idaho. Hill was elected in 1932 along with Governor C. Ben Ross.

In 1886, he came with his father in the area of Rigby in Idaho. The father built up a homestead and began to cultivate the land. For four years George assisted him in his agricultural enterprise. In 1890 he returned to Salt Lake City where he entered college. He also worked as private secretary for congressman B. H. Roberts and studied law. He also worked as Newspaper reporter in Salt Lake City.

In 1902 George Hill returned to Idaho. He founded the Rigby Hardware, Lumber & Manufacturing Company, which firm gave up the lumber business and later operated as one of the largest department stores in the eastern part of the state. For seventeen years Hill served in various positions in this enterprise. At the same time he joined several other business companies and led them to success. Among these companies was the Beet Growers Sugar Company. In 1919 George Hill was involved in the organization of the Jefferson County National Bank. He became the bank's first vice president and served as a director.

Politically George Hill joined the Democratic Party. He became chairman of the board of trustees of Rigby and later he was elected to the office of the mayor of this village. For twelve years he served on the board of trustees of the Rigby school district. During this time the school system in Rigby was considerably improved. In 1911 he was elected in the Idaho House of Representatives. Afterwards he held several local offices until he was elected to the Idaho Senate in 1916. Hill also held several offices in the Democratic Party of Idaho. Together with Benjamin R. Gray, he conducted the democratic state campaign in 1912 for future President Woodrow Wilson. In 1924 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

In 1930 George Hill was elected Lt. Governor of Idaho. In this function he served between January 2, 1933 and January 7, 1935. George Hill died 6 May 1958 in Idaho Falls. He was married to Maud Johnson. The couple had twelve children.

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(Published in History of Idaho: The Gem of the Mountains Vol. 2 by James H. Hawley 1920)

One of the most prominent citizens of Rigby, Jefferson county, is the Hon. George E. Hill, Jr., who for a number of years has taken a leading part in all the major commercial and political activities of the southeastern part of Idaho. He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 10, 1868, the son of George E. and Frances (Van Tassell) Hill. George E. Hill, Sr., was one of the pioneers and first settlers in the Rigby country, where he brought his family in 1886. Here he took up a homestead and began straightway the difficult task of bringing his tract of stubborn wild land into a state of cultivation.

George E. Hill, Jr., was only seventeen years of age when he accompanied his father to Idaho and here he remained for four years, rendering valuable assistance in the development of the homestead and undergoing all the hardships of pioneer life and of the work incidental to the early settlement of the eastern part of the state. After he had become of age, he returned to Salt Lake City, where he entered college in 1890 and graduated a few years later from the commercial department. While he was yet a resident of Salt Lake City, Senator Hill received some practical experience which was of great value to him when he entered a broader field of usefulness in later years. In 1890 he was appointed private secretary to Hon. Brigham H. Roberts, then a member of the United States congress from Utah, and served in that capacity for one year, at the end of which time he engaged in the newspaper business in Salt Lake City as reporter on the Deseret News, then the leading paper of Utah. In 1893 he entered the law office of Hon. James H. Moyle, where he remained for four years in the study and practice of law, also doing abstract and title work.

It was not until 1902 that events so shaped themselves that Senator Hill decided to return to Idaho. In that year the Yellowstone branch of the Oregon Short Line was completed north from Idaho Falls through Rigby. This improvement in the means of transportation and communication to Rigby caused Senator Hill to return and be chiefly instrumental in the organization of the Rigby Hardware, Lumber & Manufacturing Company, which firm has since gone out of the lumber business and now operates one of the largest department stores in the eastern part of the state. For seventeen years Senator Hill served as secretary-treasurer and manager of this enterprise, the success of which was largely due to his efforts. During his residence in Rigby he has organized and promoted several other successful concerns of which he is now a director and which are now doing a prosperous business in the county seat of Jefferson county. He is a director and the general manager of the Beet Growers Sugar Company, which recently completed a twelve hundred thousand dollar sugar manufacturing plant near Rigby and is now in successful operation. Senator Hill has been associated with this company from its organization, the success of which has been largely due to his business capacity and executive ability. This enterprise is an independent and cooperative one, the stockholders of which number nearly three thousand farmers and men in other lines of business in this and neighboring communities. In 1919 Senator Hill took an important part in extending the credit facilities of this section by being largely instrumental in the organization of the Jefferson County National Bank, an institution with a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars, of which he is first vice president and a director.

Soon after his return to Rigby, Senator Hill began taking a prominent part in the public affairs of this community and later of that part of the state. For two years he served as chairman of the board of trustees of Rigby under its village form of government, and after the town was incorporated in 1903, chiefly due to his efforts, he served as the first mayor and has since done most of the legal work of the corporation. He has also done much for the development of education locally, for it was chiefly due to him that the Rigby school district was made into an independent school organization, on the board of trustees of which he has served for twelve years. Now the city has a large and modern district school and an accredited high school in which is taught agricultural, scientific, domestic science and commercial courses.

In the fall of 1910 Senator Hill was elected a member of the lower house of the state legislature of Idaho and served in the regular session of 1911 and the special session of the following year, being a member of the judiciary, taxation and revenue, public health, and fish and game committees. In 1911 he was appointed a member of the board of trustees of the State Industrial School and was designated by Governor Hawley as referee to investigate a difficulty that arose in the school over two boys who were severely punished and afterward made their escape. After Senator Hill had investigated the situation for three weeks, he drew up his report in which he placed the blame upon the superintendent in charge of the school and recommended his removal. In 1915 Governor Alexander appointed him a member of the minimum wage commission, the task of which was to make investigations and then recommend a minimum wage law for the women workers of the state of Idaho. In 1916 he was elected state senator from Jefferson county, which he was instrumental in having created three years before, defeating Hon. John W. Hart, who had represented this section in the upper house of the state legislature for many years. During this session he was chairman of the state affairs committee of the senate which had charge of the state's legislative program, which was successfully enacted into law.

Senator Hill has always been a democrat and his superior abilities as an organizer have been of great value to his party. In 1910 he was elected chairman of the democratic party of Fremont county, which then included in addition to what is now Fremont county the counties of Jefferson, Madison, Teton and Clarke. He achieved complete success in conducting the campaign of his party in the fall of that year, for the entire county and state ticket was elected by eleven hundred majority which was sufficient to assure the election of Hon. James H. Hawley as governor. It was in this election that Senator Hill was first elected to the state legislature. His success as an organizer in Fremont county gave him the honor of being made secretary of the democratic state central committee during 1912-13, and, together with Hon. Benjamin R. Gray, he conducted the democratic state campaign in the autumn of 1912, which gave the electoral vote of Idaho to Woodrow Wilson when he was first elected president of the United States.

While Hon. George E. Hill, Jr. was living in Salt Lake City he there married Maude Johnson in January, 1895. To this union twelve children have been born, ten of whom are now (1919) living at home with their parents in Rigby, namely: Leona, Ardath, Elbridge, Frances, Afton, Kenneth, Hawley, Jewel, Tessie and Pershing. The first three of the above named are now occupying important commercial positions in Rigby and the four oldest of the remaining are attending school and are preparing themselves for useful occupations in the future. Both the father and mother are loyal and consistent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of Rigby, the former having done important missionary work in behalf of the denomination in the southern states from 1897 until 1900, and while he was thus engaged he had five hundred elders under his charge, being connected with the headquarters of the southern states mission at Chattanooga, Tennessee.

• Updated from Find A Grave Memorial via mother Francis Louisa Hill (born Van Tassell) by SmartCopy: Nov 9 2015, 23:43:16 UTC