Background
Theodore Erasmus Hilgard was born on July 7, 1790 in Marnheim, Rhenish Palatinate, Bavaria. He was the son of Jakob and Maria Dorothea (Engelmann) Hilgard. His father and his mother's father were Protestant ministers.
(Excerpt from Briefe an Seinen Freund Philipp Heinrich V. ...)
Excerpt from Briefe an Seinen Freund Philipp Heinrich V. Kraemer, 1835-1865: Ein Beitrag zur Biographie Hilgards Sowie zur Geschichte der Kulturellen Beziehungen Zwischen Saarland-Rheinpfalz und Nordamerika Auf allen Gebieten des amerikanischen Lebens ist der deutsche Einschlag mehr oder minder stark zu verspuren und außerordentlich viel verdanken die Vereinigten Staaten den reichen kulturellen Kräften des deutschen Volksteils. Ueber 5 Millionen deutscher Volksgenossen sind im 19.jahr hundert in Nordamerika ansässig geworden und etwa ein Fünftel des amerikanischen Volkes von heute hat deutsches Blut in seinen Adern. Heute, wo wir uns der Verbundenheit mit dem Deutsch tum im Ausland mehr als je bewußt sind, haben wir allen Anlaß, der Geschichte der deutsch-amerikanischen Be ziehungen nachzugehen. Mit Stolz dürfen wir feststellen, daß unsere kleine Rheinpfalz in besonderem Maße an diesen Beziehungen beteiligt ist. Von den vielen Pfälzer Familien aber, die vor hundert Jahren dauernd oder vorübergehend in der Union seßhaft wurden, verdient die Familie Hilgard eine besondere Würdigung. Der Name Hilgard ist vor allem durch Heinrich hilgard-villard (1835 den einfluß reichen deutsch-amerikanischen Finanzmann und großen Wohltäter der Pfalz, weithin bekannt geworden. In seinen Lebenserinnerungen (berlin 1906) nennt er sich bezeichnen derweise „einen Bürger zweier Welten, da er zwischen der nordamerikanischen und der deutschen Welt dauerhafte Brücken gebaut, in mannigfachster Weise durch seine kul turpolitische Tätigkeit das amerikanische Geistesleben be fruchtete, ohne die Verbindung mit seiner Heimat ahzu brechen, so daß er sich mit Recht auf beiden Seiten des Ozeans ein ehrenvolles Andenken geschaffen hat. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Theodore Erasmus Hilgard was born on July 7, 1790 in Marnheim, Rhenish Palatinate, Bavaria. He was the son of Jakob and Maria Dorothea (Engelmann) Hilgard. His father and his mother's father were Protestant ministers.
Thwarted in his ambition to become an engineer by his nearsightedness, young Hilgard turned to law and studied at the universities of Gottingen and Heidelberg, also at Coblenz and Paris.
At the age of twenty-two Hilgard was an advocate at the superior court of Trier, soon afterwards he removed to the seat of the court of appeals at Zweibrücken. There he established a large law practice, was a member of the Landrat of the Rhenish district, and for twelve years beginning in 1824 was a justice of the court of appeals. He edited the Annalen der Rechtspflege in Bayern, often presided at the assizes, and was considered one of the foremost lawyers of his state. In 1835 he resigned, owing to his dissatisfaction with certain reactionary and bureaucratic measures which were instituted by the Bavarian government in the administration of justice in the Palatinate.
Hilgard felt a romantic love for country life, for constitutional freedom, and wished to provide for his large family a wider scope for their activity. Accordingly, having heard from friends and relatives accurate accounts of the advantages and disadvantages of pioneer life in the Missouri and Mississippi country, he made his calculation and decided to emigrate.
By way of Havre and New Orleans he arrived in St. Louis in the spring of 1836 with his wife Margaretha Pauli and their four sons and five daughters. Their destination was Belleville, Illinois, on the other side of the river, where they were welcomed in the German colony of "Latin farmers, " so called because most of these pioneers had come over with greater knowledge of the classics than of farming. They settled on the hills of Richland Creek, near Belleville, on a tract containing good timber and some rich farm land. The place was soon improved with dwellings, orchards, and gardens. Hilgard applied himself diligently to the task of farming and became noted locally as an expert in horticulture and viticulture.
Though he was a learned jurist, he never practised law in his new home nor did he enter politics, except as an adviser to his German neighbors, personally or in articles written for the German language press. He continued his favorite studies, however--benefit of his scholarship.
Theodor Hilgard parcelled out a large part of his land in building lots, which he sold profitably, thereby gaining a reputation for parsimony. He shrewdly bought tracts in other parts of the state, founding upon one of them the town of Freedom as he had previously founded West Belleville.
Hilgard was the author of a large number of essays on social subjects, including: Twelve Paragraphs on Pauperism (1847), reviewed in the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, July 1848, and translated by himself into French; en Paragraphs on Constitutional Monarchy, and Republics (1849); and other works. He wrote verse in German for private circulation only, but took more pride in his translations of King Lear, the Nibelungenlied, Tom Moore's The Fire Worshippers, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. In 1860, at Heidelberg, he published his autobiography.
(Excerpt from Briefe an Seinen Freund Philipp Heinrich V. ...)
Hilgard was reluctant to learn English, and was always in close contact with his native country.
Hilgard was married to Margaretha Pauli, of Osthofen near Worms. They had four sons and five daughters. Hilgard carefully instructed his own sons so that they found no difficulty in matriculating in German universities. The oldest, Julius Erasmus, inheriting his father's genius for mathematics, became an engineer and chief of the United States Coast Survey; the youngest, Eugene Woldemar, was distinguished as an authority on soils. He held the original estate long after the death of his first wife and after all his children had homes of their own.
At the age of sixty-four he married Maria Theveny and with her returned to Germany in 1854.