Hill, James Jerome 1838-1916

Railroad financier.

Businessman and railroad executive, James J. Hill (1838-1916), was founder of the Great Northern Railway Company, which incorporated and extended an important transcontinental line, running from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington by 1893.

Frequently called the "Empire Builder," Hill amassed a personal fortune through his aggressive acquisition of holdings in rival railroads and other business concerns. In later years, he focused on philanthropic work, writing, and giving speeches, many of which were published.

James J. Hill was born on a farm in southern Ontario on September 16, 1838. His formal schooling ended at the age of 14 when his father died, and he worked as a store clerk and at other jobs in the towns of Rockwood and Guelph over the next three years.

Hill left Canada at age 17, visiting New York and Philadelphia and arriving by steamboat in St. Paul in the Minnesota Territory on July 21, 1856. His first jobs there were as a clerk and shipping agent for steamboat companies. He then began his own transport ventures, first building a warehouse on the St. Paul levee and then turning his sights northwest to the Red River Valley. He partnered with Norman Kittson in the Red River Transportation Company, which gained a monopoly on Red River steamboat traffic until 1878. In the same years Hill joined with Chauncy Griggs, George Acker, and E. N. Saunders to form fuel companies which grew to control a large portion of coal and wood trade in St. Paul.

Hill married Mary Theresa Mehegan, daughter of Irish immigrants, in 1867. Together they had ten children. The family lived in St. Paul, with additional homes in North Oaks, Minnesota, New York City, Paris, and Jekyl (known later as Jekyll) Island, Georgia.

Hill believed the future of transportation lay in railroads and in 1878 he joined with Kittson, John S. Kennedy, and Canadians Donald Smith and George Stephen in buying out the failing St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Hill concentrated the following decade on extending this line, reorganized as the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba, into western Minnesota, Dakota, Montana and the Pacific Northwest. The final spike of the railroad's transcontinental line was driven January 6, 1893.

Over the next twenty years Hill managed the rechristened Great Northern Railway and ventured into mining, timber, land, and livestock, as well as philanthropy and public speaking. His attempts to overtake and merge the Northern Pacific Railway with his own companies led to an antitrust suit by the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, that Hill eventually lost.

Though he officially retired in 1912 Hill maintained an active hand in his businesses until his death on May 29, 1916. His personal fortune at that time has been estimated at $63 million with $200 million in related assets, making Hill one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures of America’s Gilded Age.