Hitchman, Robert

Robert Hitchman was an insurance agent, book collector, bibliographer, and an amateur historian of the Pacific Northwest. His specific area of focus was the origin of local place names, as the author of the book Place Names of Washington (Tacoma, Wash. : Washington State Historical Society, 1985). He also published a bibliographic newsletter on local historical writings entitled Sighted From the Crow's Nest (Seattle).

Hitchman was born in Denver, Colorado on October 28th, 1908. He became a student at the University of Washington during the 1920s, and after his 1929 graduation summa cum laude with a degree in anthropology, he took a job as a researcher for Northwestern Mutual Insurance.

Hitchman interrupted his career to serve in the army during WWII, finally retiring from the service as a colonel in the reserves in 1968. He kept for his historical collection a set of the transport ship logs and loading information from the D-Day invasion. After the war, while serving as a reserve officer, he continued his prewar career as an insurance agent for what was now renamed the Unigard Mutual Insurance Company, where his historical interests led him to accumulate a collection of clippings about unusual or noteworthy insurance cases. In 1959, he was made assistant vice president of his division. In 1969 he was promoted to president of Unigard Mutual, and he also became president of Unigard Olympic in 1970. From 1971 until his retirement in 1974, he served as chairman of the board.

Hitchman's early interest in history can be seen in his autograph collection, which includes the signatures of many prominent people. A few of the books and materials from his collection date back to his college years, as well. During his time at the University of Washington, Hitchman was a student of Professor Edmund S. Meany (1862-1935), which provoked his initial interest in Washington place names. It was during the postwar period that he began to seriously collect and read books and ephemera about local history; in 1952, he began publishing Sighted From the Crow’s Nest, a bibliographic newsletter featuring local historical publications and reviews which he continued to write and publish until 1979. This placed him in an important position in the community of Pacific Northwest historians, through which he encouraged many authors doing grassroots historical work and spread the work of these writers to a wider audience. As he became prominent and respected within that community, he carried on extensive correspondence with many authors, historians, and book dealers. Eventually he began work on his major project: a new volume on Washington place names that would improve on Edmund Meany's book Origin of Washington Geographic Names (Seattle, Wash. : University of Washington Press, 1923). Hitchman's work was posthumously published as Place Names of Washington by the Washington State Historical Society in 1985.

Robert Hitchman was an active member of many different historical and bibliophilic organizations. He was president of the Washington State Historical Society from 1976 until his death in 1981; on the board of the Seattle Historical Society from 1955-62; chairman of the Pacific Northwest Group of the Explorers’ Club from 1968-73; president of the Seattle Society of the Archeological Institute of America 1961-62; and historian for the Rotary Club of Seattle district 503. Hitchman was also a board member of the Friends of the Seattle Public Library; a member of the Bibliographic Society of America, and on the advisory committee for "The Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America" from 1959; a president of the Seattle Foundation; a member of the Rainier Club in Seattle; and, a member of the American Antiquarian Society (based in Massachusetts). Hitchman was a bibliographic consultant to the director of libraries at the University of Washington; he also held positions on the boards of several magazines over the years, and was a lay reader and clerk of the vestry at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. Though he retired in March of 1974, Hitchman remained on the board of Unigard Mutual Insurance Co.

Robert Hitchman died of complications sustained from a heart attack while attending a meeting of the American Antiquarian Society in Worchester, Massachusetts, on April 17th, 1981.

From the guide to the Robert Hitchman papers, 1836-1986, 1952-1979, (University of Washington Libraries Special Collections)