Background
HILLARD, Major McKinley was born on October 23, 1896 in Morgan Company, Tennessee, United States. Son of Mandeville Ervin and Clara Elizabeth (Rich) Hillard.
General Assembly House of Delegates
HILLARD, Major McKinley was born on October 23, 1896 in Morgan Company, Tennessee, United States. Son of Mandeville Ervin and Clara Elizabeth (Rich) Hillard.
Hillard served in the United States. Army in World War I, after which he attended the College of William and Mary and the T.C. Williams Law School at the University of Richmond.
His family moved to the Deep Creek area of Norfolk County, Virginia in 1907. He practiced law in Portsmouth, Virginia beginning in 1926. Hillard and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates as a Democrat in 1927, representing Norfolk County and the City of South Norfolk and he was reelected in 1929.
In 1931, he was elected to the Virginia Senate representing the 3rd District which he held until he resigned in 1954 upon being appointed Circuit Court Clerk for Norfolk County.
Hillard was appointed a Circuit Court judge in 1961. He used his political savvy and was instrumental in the merger of Norfolk County with South Norfolk to form the city of Chesapeake in 1963.
He retired from the bench in 1971 but continued serving the community in a variety of ways: at Deep Creek Baptist Church and the Deep Creek Ruritan Club. The Major Hillard library is a public library in the City of Chesapeake that was named in Hillard"s honor.
Hillard died in June 1977 in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Member: American Legion. Knights of Pythias.; Portsmouth Norfolk Company Bar Association.
Spouse Mary Frances Cherry, November 26, 1921, Portsmouth, Virginia.