What in the Sam Hill?
A Man of Peace.
Historians believe that the expression “what in the Sam Hill?” originated with a man called Sam Hill, a minister of finance to Oliver Cromwell in 17th century England. Others believe the expression is attributed to a Quaker named Sam Hill who lived part of his life in Seattle and who was thought of as an eccentric because of his many bizarre ideas.

Hill spent his entire life promoting peace around the world and in 1915 one of his peace missions brought him to Victoria, British Columbia. It was there in the home of his friend, Bert Todd, a future Mayor of Victoria, that the idea for a peace structure was conceived. The two men came up with the idea of having donations from the children of Canada and the United States (the future) to depict the strength of an everlasting peace.
Hill’s dream of such a structure became reality on September 6th, 1921, with the completion of the Peace Arch. Hill had himself financed the major portion of the cost of the $260,000 monument. Bert Todd’s own two sons (Dick and Joe) had made the first donation of eighteen cents! The names of all the children were placed in a time capsule inside the structure to be opened in 2021, one hundred years later.
Thousands of people drive by the Peace Arch today crossing between British Columbia and Washington State, barely giving it a second thought. Few know the story behind it or that it was the brainchild of Sam Hill.
His story was one of rags to riches and he was the epitome of the self-made man who was dubbed “the friend of Kings,” born in poverty in Deep River, North California in 1857. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sam’s father lost everything, so he moved his family to Minneapolis. By the time Hill was nine years old he was an orphan and the years that followed were difficult. Hill worked hard at plumbing, wood piling, carpentry and farming, always with a strong determination to succeed, and make enough money to enter college. He worked his way through Cornell University, Haverford College and finally Harvard. Eventually he became successful in real estate dealings, which made him enough money to take a law course and be admitted to the bar.
His success led him to meet James Jerome Hill, the railroad magnate, and he joined the legal staff at the railroad company. He also married James Hill’s daughter, Mary, who didn’t have to change her name by marrying another Hill. The marriage, however, was not a happy one. Their union was strange from the beginning as he was a staunch Quaker of simple tastes and Mary was the daughter of a rich man brought up in a Catholic family in prominent social circles. It was doomed to failure and the couple mostly lived separate lives in different places. Their two children were also disappointments to Sam Hill. He considered his son to be a failure, and his daughter had a mental illness.
Some of his bizarre ideas involved royalty. King Albert of Belgium had been Hill’s roommate when studying law in Munich and when Queen Marie of Romania visited Seattle in the 1920s, Hill decided to build a house for her use. It still stands on East Highland Drive.
His other achievements included the building of a replica of England’s Stonehenge which stands on the banks of the Columbia River. He dedicated it to all the young men still being “sacrificed to the gods of war.”


All his life, Sam Hill’s mission was to bring the importance of peace to the attention of the entire world and this message is immortalized in the Peace Arch between Canada and the United States.
Unfortunately, covid restrictions were in full force in 2021 when the ceremony to open the vault should have happened, so it was postponed. No date has yet been agreed for the ceremony to happen.
However, this is a story well worth telling at this time in history when peace between these two great nations is so important while certainly at risk.
If Peace does not endure, we will indeed be justified in asking “what in the Sam Hell has happened”?