“It will be noted that the Hillmans are characterised for their earnestness and integrity. They have exhibited a high degree of intelligence by the professional positions attained. In the religious work of this country they have been prominent, and in the medical profession have furnished many graduates. Lawyers, bankers and commercial men of recognised ability, are recorded among the Hillmans mentioned in these pages.”[1]

This begs the question – what is significant or famous?! A worldwide search for the name “Hillman” via the Google Web search engine produces in the region of 375,000 hits! These vary in content from a few manufacturers that bear the name Hillman, interest in the now extinct car marque Hillman from the UK, through genealogical references, to the few famous and significant Hillman people.

A number of frequently encountered mentions of the name Hillman have been collated here – largely in North America and the UK – including special sections on the Hillman Motor Car Company, Hillman’s Airways and the Hillman family of Lewes, Sussex in UK (see below).

It is impossible, even in this day of freely available information on the net, to include each and every instance of the Hillman name and its achievements. With some 30,000 bearers of the name in the world today, and possibly going back one thousand years since surnames began to be used, I will have overlooked some I am sure. My apologies to them – and if you know of any really worthy of inclusion, please let me know!

4.1 Significant Hillmans in Europe

William Henry Hillman and Edward Henry Hillman do not get all the kudos for bringing the family name to the forefront in Europe. There have been a few other Hillmans of note which are mentioned briefly here.

Capt H.E. Hillman – China: Captain Hillman, pen-name “Mariner”, was in the Royal Navy and in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service over the period 1920-1937. Exeter University Library has a collection of articles he wrote while there for the “North China Daily News”[2], including coverage of the fighting in Shanghai in August 1937.

Ellis Simon Hillman – GLC Councillor: The 1982 edition of Who’s Who[3] gives an account of Ellis Simon Hillman. He was born 17 Nov 1828, son of David and Annie Hillman. He married Louise and they had one son. He served as a Greater London Council (GLC), Hackney Central Councillor from 1964. He worked as the Principal Lecturer in Environmental Studies at the NE London Polytechnic from 1972, and Head of the International Office from 1981.

G.C. Hillman – agricultural botanist: Together with DR Harris, GC Hillman edited a volume on agricultural botany – “Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation”[4].

Mayer Hillman – social scientist: In more modern times Mayer Hillman, Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, has commented on humanity’s state for some time. Most recently he has commented on the reality of Climate Change, and the fact that it is now far too late to do anything about it. Major perturbations will result changing the world order and possibly even man’s very survival. He has studied man’s impact on the earth for the past 60 years, including the undesirability out-of-town supermarkets, the negative impacts of closing railway branch lines, and the need for energy ratings for houses. He has also challenged the relentless pursuit of economic growth and the supremacy of the internal combustion engine with all of its impacts on life from fuel harvesting through manufacture, effluents and final disposal and their effects upon society and quality of life.

Mayer Hillman was born in London to Scottish-Jewish parents. His father was David Hillman, son of a orthodox rabbi who had fled the Lithuanian pogroms, and was in addition a stained glass artist and portrait painter. His mother was an active GP doctor[5]. David Hillman was in fact son of Rabbi Schmuel Yitzhak Hillman, Rabbi in Lithuania, Glasgow and then London[6].

“Music, Love, Education and Happiness” must be the focus of life, not the pursuit of expanding economies states Mayer Hillman[7]. “Even if the world went zero-carbon today that would not save us because we’ve gone past the point of no return.”.

And another quote from Mayer Hillman: “Our continuing uneconomic growth makes us complicit in a process that is triggering an ecological catastrophe for our children and generations beyond them. They will justifiably sit in judgment on our failure to have prevented its devastating consequences knowing that we chose to look the other way.”

So – one famous British Hillman fostered the evolution of the motor car and the manufacture of the affordable family car for everyone in the 1920s, and another was in the forefront of developing aviation for everyone in the 1930s – but then a century later in 2018 yet another Hillman can clearly see how critically damaging human emancipation through individual car-ownership and universal cheap travel by aeroplane has been and continues to be!

4.2 Significant Hillmans of the USA

Sidney Hillman – labour leader[8]: The Hillman name that appears if any in encyclopaedias, is that of Sidney Hillman, the Lithuanian, of Russian Jewish origin He was born in Zagare, Lithuania in 1887, as Simcha Hillman. His parents were Schmuel Hillman – a merchant, and Judith Paikin – a shopkeeper. He became involved in trades unions at Kaunas in Lithuania after a year in Jewish Seminary aged 14. After involvement with labour reforms he was imprisoned by the Tsarist government and then in 1905 he fled to the UK.

He lived in Manchester for 2 years and then moved to the USA aged 20 in 1907, settling in Chicago as an apprentice (clothing) cutter. His involvement with Trades Unions in the USA led him to found the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1915, later UNITE, and he is remembered as a great labour leader, who tirelessly tried to bring dignity and respect to working people, including social services and political action in union functions, developing unemployment insurance, co-operative housing and a model arbitration system.

He was married to Bessie Abramowitz who was herself an important labour leader in her own right. They had two daughters.

During the Great Depression he made use of the two banks created by the union to preserve garment businesses. He became leader of the AFL – American Federation of Labour, later breaking away to form the CIO – Congress of Industrial Organisations, whose Vice-President he then became. In 1939 he was elected as chairman of the executive council of the Textile Workers’ Union of America.

He was later an influential adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, involved with the “New Deal”, the National Recovery Administration, the office of Production Management, and the War Production Board’s labour division. He was prominent in the Political Action Committee (known today as the American Jewish Committee) of the CIO, prominent in the 1944 Election Campaign. After WWII he was elected Vice-President of the World Federation of Trade Unions. He died in July 1946 in Long Island, NY. He is remembered as one of the greatest labour leaders in US history.

Chris Hillman – musician[9]: Starting as “just another curly-headed, guitar-playing kid from Southern California” Chris Hillman became lead singer and song-writer with the Byrds Rock band. Along the way he formed a band called the Hillmen. In the intervening years he has progressed from Country music, into Rock, and returned to Country music, where he is successful as a collaborator and as a solo singer.

Chris Hillman was born around 1945 in San Diego, California. His early music interests were encouraged by his older sister and his mother who bought him his first US$10 guitar in Tijuana at age 14. He was also proficient and famous with the mandolin, He formed his first band at age 15, making their first recording when he was just 17.

In 1964 he formed the Byrds band with 14 chart hits to their name one of which was recording Bob Dylan’s “Mr Tambourine Man” that rose to Number One. The band got together for a re-union in 1973 and achieved “Hall of Fame” membership in 1991. Chris Hillman later formed the very successful country music “Flying Burrito Brothers” band. This was followed by the “Desert Rose Band” with 16 country hits between 1987 and 1994.

One of his famous quotes concerns growing up “Put it this way – I get up when I used to go to bed”. My father was greatly amused when living and working in London in the ‘70s to see “my” name up in lights at Piccadilly Circus, during a visit by this band!

James Hillman – psychologist[10]: James Hillman was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA He became a Jungian analyst in Switzerland in the 1950s, becoming Director of Studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich. He returned to the USA in 1978, then based in Thompson, Connecticut. He has published widely on Re-Visioning Psychology, promulgating a way of living multiple-mindedly as opposed to single-mindedly, based largely upon the Greek religion’s way of polytheistic reading of the psyche. This is today known as “archetypal psychology”.

Brenda Hillman – poet[11]: Another Californian, Brenda Hillman has published a number of poetry collections, among them White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence and Loose Sugar. She has won a number of awards for her poetry including the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Prize, and an NEA fellowship. She lives and teaches in California.

Hillman – Periodicals – comic book publisher[12]: Alex L. Hillman was a former New York city book publisher, who in 1938 established his own company for true confession and true crime magazine publications. He also produced comic books and magazines called Pageant, Air Fighter Comics, and Airboy Comics relating to super-heroes, crime detection and Westerns. In 1948 he began producing paperback books on similar themes until 1961 when he sold the business. .

Alex Hillman was married to Rita and together they collected and commissioned art in part for his publications. In later life he established the Alex Hillman Family Foundation in New York to oversee the art collection.

The Hillman Library – University of Pittsburgh[13]: John Hartwell “Hart” Hillman jnr. was a coal magnate who in the 1950s donated land adjacent to Forbes Field to the University for a Library. This was formally dedicated in 1968. It was supported by the Hillman Family and the Hillman Foundation with millions towards its construction and named for John H. Hillman junior. Its holdings include around 1.5 million books covering Business, Public Affairs, Library and Information Sciences and many other disciplines. It also holds an important collection of John James Audubon bird prints and the John Woodruff Olympic gold medal, won by him, an African-American, in front of Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games.

John Hartwell Hillman founded the Hillman Company in Pittsburgh, Ohio (not to be confused with the Hillman Group Inc.) in 1911 by transforming his father’s (also John Hartwell Hillman – but snr.) coal and coke business into a “successful, vertically integrated enterprise based on coal”. “Hart’s” son Henry Lea Hillman joined the company in 1946 and from the 1960’s changed the industrial base of the company to one of business and private equity investment seen as a force in the American (USA) economy. He was the fifth child and second son of Hart Hillman jnr, married to Juliet Cummins Lea. By the 1980s the Hillman Company was the largest single venture capital investor in the USA. Henry Hillman died in 2017 aged 98 but not before he and his wife made major donations to the arts and sciences – including the Hillman Library noted above. This has reached the total of 18 Hillman Family Foundations. Another famous contribution was the establishment of the Hillman Cancer Center also at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Hillman Group Inc. – hardware manufacturers[14]: Hillman Group Inc. was founded by Max W. Hillman in 1964, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company produces a wide-range of hardware including fastenings, anchors, keys, letters and signs and many other products in use by DIY-ers as well as commercial construction and agriculture. Although based in the USA its products have spread to nearby Canada and its products are now widely available in Europe and elsewhere.

Sources

[1] Hillman, H. (1902). Ancestral Chronological Record of the Hillman Family. Schenectady, NY: The Walls Press, Scotia, NY.

[2] North China Daily News.

[3] 1982. Who’s Who.

[4] Harris, DR & GC Hillman. 1989. Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation. Unwin Hyman, London.

[5] Karpf, A. 2002. A chain reaction. The Guardian. 2^nd Nov 2002.

[6] Levitan, G. 2016. Eilatgordinlevitan, 17^th Jun 2016. Retrieved from Hillman Family: http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/hillman.html

[7] Barkham, Patrick. 2018. “We’re Doomed”: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention. The Guardian, 25^th Aug 2018.

[8] www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhillman.htm; www.uniterrjb.org/SidneyHillmanBio.html; www.uniterrjb.org/SidneyHillmanBio.html; http://www.israelect.com/reference/WillieMartin/COM-3.htm 2003

[9] http://www.chrishillman.com/chris.htm 2002

[10] www.sprinqpub.com/hillman.htm 2003

[11] http://www.rhymeandreason.conVnews/featured/hillman/main.html 2002

[12] Wikipedia 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillman_Periodicals

[13] Wikipedia 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillman_Library

[14] https://www.hillmangroup.com/us/en/about-us 2019.