Background
He grew up during the Napoleonic Wars in a family very sympathetic to the principles of the French revolution.
He grew up during the Napoleonic Wars in a family very sympathetic to the principles of the French revolution.
He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg (1807), Göttingen (1808-1809) and Paris (1810), and took a legal course in Coblenz (1811).
During the time of the French rule, he practiced law in Trèves, and, on the restoration of the Rhine Province to Germany, settled in Zweibrücken, where he held the appointment of associate justice of the court of appeals from 1821 till 1835. In 1835 he came to the, and settled in Saint Clair County, Illinois. He purchased a farm near Belleville, and besides its general management gave much attention to viticulture, being the first to introduce it in Illinois.
At first he tried to discover which of the Rhenish or French vines were best adapted to the climate, but soon found the indigenous Catawba grape most suitable, and he produced a wine that acquired a high local reputation.
The town of West Belleville, which gradually surrounded his original homestead, was laid out on his property and under his direction. He profitably sold a large part of his land as house lots.
In 1851 he returned to Germany, having been invited by the Bavarian government to take part in recasting the law of mortgages of that country into a more modern form. He passed the remainder of his life quietly in Heidelberg.
Julius Erasmus Hilgard (January 7, 1825 – May 9, 1890) was an engineer
Theodore Charles Hilgard (February 28, 1828 - March 5, 1875) was a physician. Eugene Woldemar Hilgard (January 5, 1833 – January 8, 1916) was an expert on soils. He was a granduncle of journalist and financier Henry Villard.
He resigned as justice because of reactionary and bureaucratic policies instituted by the Bavarian government in the administration of justice in the Palatinate.
He was also a member of the provincial assembly from 1821 till 1826.