Walter Barnard Hill

Background

Walter Barnard Hill was born on September 5, 1851 in Talbotton, Georgia, United States. His father was Judge Barnard Hill, a native of Massachusetts, who went to Georgia in 1822, first settling in Talbotton, but later at Macon. His mother was Mary Clay Birch, a native Georgian, said to be a relative of Henry Clay.

Education

In the spring of 1868 Hill entered the University of Georgia as a sophomore half-advanced. He graduated with honors in 1870 and in the following year completed both the one-year law course and the requirements for the Master of Arts degree, thus receiving three degrees in three years.

Career

Hill entered upon the practice of law in partnership with his father at Macon, and when only twenty-one he was appointed on a commission to revise the code of Georgia. On the elevation of his father to the bench, he formed a law partnership with Nathaniel E. Harris, a classmate at the university and later governor of Georgia. Chief Justice Simmons of the state supreme court declared that Hill was the best brief maker he had ever known at the Georgia bar, and he was generally referred to as "the scholar of the Georgia bar. "

For five years he was a member of the law faculty of Mercer University at Macon. He was one of the organizers of the Georgia Bar Association and served as its secretary, 1883-1886, and as president, 1887-1888. Throughout his connection with the Association he was most active in using the organization of lawyers to effect needed reform in legal procedure and in raising the standard of legal education and admission to the bar. He was also a member of a committee of the American Bar Association appointed to make a study of the business of the federal courts with a view to relieving the congestion on the docket of the United States Supreme Court, which was at the time about five years behind with its calendar. The circuit courts of appeal developed as the result of the work of that committee.

He wrote occasional speeches and essays of which the most important, probably, was Anarchy, Socialism, and the Labor Movement, published in 1886. In 1899 the board of trustees of the University of Georgia elected Hill chancellor, breaking the long tradition of electing a clergyman to the office. In a few years he injected into the university community a new impulse, a new vision, a new determination. This spiritual revival was his prime contribution to higher education in the state. His tangible accomplishments, however, were of first importance.

He induced the governor and the board of trustees of the university to visit the University of Wisconsin in order to see a great modern state university in operation; he allayed the bitter hostility of the less liberal leaders of certain denominations; he prevailed upon the legislature in 1900 to recognize the university in the annual appropriations bill; and he obtained appropriations for several new buildings, the first to be erected in many years. He also gained for the institution a new library, presented through the generosity of a personal friend, and began a campus-extension movement which ultimately resulted in the expansion of the campus from 36 to 1, 200 acres.

When Hill died suddenly in the winter of 1905 from an attack of pneumonia, his passing was regarded as truly disastrous.

Achievements

• Hill was a prominent lawyer and educator. He had made many achievments during his career: created the foundations for the College of Agriculture and the College of Education; expanded the law curriculum from one to two years; secured $151, 000 in funding from the Georgia General Assembly between 1900 and 1905. Through his efforts also the system of university secondary-school inspection and certification was initiated with funds which he secured from the General Education Board, and, most important of all, under his guidance the College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was reorganized involving the creation of a State College of Agriculture, though the act creating the college was passed the year after Hill's death. It has been calculated that the money value of the legislative appropriations and private gifts obtained by the university during the six years of Hill's administration was nearly three times as much as the institution had received from similar sources in its entire history up to that time. Aside from his legal activities Hill was an outstanding figure in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and was also interested in the cause of prohibition in Georgia, being called the "apostle of prohibition" in the state.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Rural Survey Of Clarke County, Georgia: With Special Reference To The Negroes...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The University of Virginia in the life of the nation; academic addresses delivered on the occasion of the installation of Edwin Anderson Alderman as president of the University of Virginia, April thirteenth, year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and five

    (Lang:- eng, Pages 136. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of...)

  • College life in the Reconstruction South : Walter B. Hill's student correspondence, University of Georgia, 1869-1871 (University of Georgia Libraries - Miscellanea publications)
  • The Georgia School Improvement Club: Its history and plan

Religion

Hill was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Membership

Hill was one of the organizers of the Georgia Bar Association.

Personality

Hill was a reserved man with little joviality or popular appeal, but those who were associated with him in any intimate way retain lasting impressions of his nobility of character.

Connections

In 1879 Hill married Sallie Parna Barker, of Macon, Georgia. To them two sons and two daughters were born.

Father:

Judge Barnard Hill

Mother:

Mary Clay (Birch) Hill

Spouse:

Sallie Parna (Barker) Hill

References

• Men of Mark in Georgia: A Complete and Elaborate History of the State From its Settlement to the Present Time, Chiefly Told in Biographies and ... Georgia's Progress and Development Volume 4
• Walter Barnard Hill University of Georgia Bulletin, Memorial Issue, May 1906