Elijah Clarence Hills (July 2, 1867 – Apr. 21, 1932), professor and philologist, was born in Arlington, Illinois, to Elijah Justin Hills and Mary Eleanor Larkin Hills. At a young age, his family moved to Tampa, Florida, where he acquired his “early and intimate” knowledge of the Spanish language. (Morley, 314) In 1892, Hills graduated from Cornell University, where he was a teaching fellow for one year before spending a year abroad in Paris. In 1896, he joined the faculty of Rollins College in Florida as a professor of modern languages, where he taught for seven years.

In 1898, Hills married Metta Virgil Strough. Together, they had four children.

It was during his tenure at Rollins College that Hills joined the staff of the Cuban Summer School program at Harvard in 1900. He served as the director of English classes coordinating forty separate classes taught by students of Radcliffe College and Harvard College. The English classes proved to be among the most popular among the Cuban teachers and Hills wrote a very detailed account of the program’s origins, participants, and activities in the Harvard Graduates Magazine in September 1900. He informed his Harvard readers that the Summer School was "the most representative gathering of Cubans that has ever been held — in Cuba or elsewhere,” a claim that was correct in many respects. As he noted, 125 of Cuba’s 129 municipalities were represented, and a majority (52%) of the teachers were women, roughly the same proportion as on the island as a whole. At that time, only 30 percent of the population was literate and white Cubans were more than 20 times likely to have a degree than black Cubans.

The “few negroes and mulattoes” who participated in the program, however, were roughly proportionate to the small number of qualified teachers of African descent on the island. Hills believed that “most of the Cubans at Harvard are of European descent, and a great majority show evidence of cosmopolitanism, and of the ripe culture that comes with an old civilization.” (Hills, 38) His appreciation for the Cuban teachers’ love of literature, especially recited poetry, is also evident and he encouraged Harvard readers to explore the works of Cuban writers like “Heredia, Avellaneda, Delmonte, Plácido, Milanés, José, Jose de la Luz Caballero, and Suarez.” (Hills, 39) In 1901, inspired by his time with the Cuban teachers, he published his anthology Bardos Cubanos in Spanish - a collection of the “best poems” produced by the island’s great nineteenth century poets.

From 1902 to 1916, Hills served as chairman of the Romance Language Department at Colorado College where he and his colleagues made the institution known as “one of the soundest and most thorough in the country.” (Morley 314) Hills is described as aHe was regarded as a dedicated professional and hospitable host, whose table was stretched to accommodate students and friends every Sunday dinner. In 1904, along with J.D.M Ford (also a teacher at the 1900 Cuban Summer School at Harvard) Hills completed his work on the Hills-Ford Spanish Grammar, which pioneered the field of New Mexican Spanish. In 1906, he received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Colorado after presenting his treatise on New Mexican Spanish. That same year, he received the Litt. D. degree from Rollins College.

In 1916, when local events “disrupted” the faculty of Colorado College, Hills moved to New York to serve as a librarian of the Hispanic Society of America in New York. Still, collegiate life was more attractive, and in 1918 Hills accepted a call to lead the Department of Romance Languages at Indiana University. In 1922 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as Professor of Spanish, a position which was later renamed to ‘Professor of Romance Philology’, and also served as the chairman of the Department of Spanish.

His other major publications co-authored with J.D.M. Ford were First Spanish Course (1917), Portuguese Grammar (1925), and Spanish Grammar for Colleges (1928). In all his collaborations with Ford sold about one million copies. Hills’ journal articles were reprinted in one volume by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish in 1929 as Hispanic Studies.
Among other positions and affiliations, he served as a contributor to and associate editor of Hispania, a journal published by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. He was a corresponding member of the Spanish Academy and was decorated as Comendador of the Real Orden de Isabel la Católica (Commander of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic) by the Spanish government.

In the fall of 1930, Hills was overcome with a sudden illness. Nearly two years later, after an operation failed to bring permanent relief, Elijah Clarence Hills died in Oakland on April 21, 1932, aged 64 years. He was survived by his wife and three of his children.

Further Reading

1. Ford, J. D. M. “Elijah Clarence Hills (1867-1932)” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 69, No. 13 (Feb., 1935): 512-513.

2. Hill, E. C. “The Cuban Summer School,” The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Vol. IX, No. 33, September, 1900: 37-41.

3. Morley, S. Griswold. “Elijah Clarence Hills, 1867-1932,” Hispania, Vol. 15, No. 3 (May, 1932): 314-316.

4. Obituary: Oakland (CA) Tribune, April 22, 1932