Empire Builder

The front page story of my Minnesota newspaper today contained an article about a local treasure in St. Paul called the James J. Hill Reference Library (http://www.jjhill.org/). Mr. Hill was a classic rags to riches success story who built a personal empire of railroads. Towards the end of his life Mr. Hill made plans to build a business reference library that would help others build business careers and also serve as an archive for his personal records. Mr. Hill modeled his library after JP Morgan's library since they were business partners.

I owe a huge "thank you" to Mr. Hill's vision since his library legacy provided some of the resources I needed to complete my Master's degree since I spent numerous hours completing research in this library. The newspaper article I read explained that the library's management board has decided to remove the personal archives that Mr. Hill (a modern day pack rat) left to the library. Potential homes for these archives -- which include Mr. Hill's list of books he had read, a practice I have done for years so I feel a certain kinship to Mr. Hill -- include the Minnesota Historical Society and a railroad museum in St. Louis, Missouri so it appears this wealth of historical information will be in good hands wherever they end up.

If any of my readers visit St. Paul, Minnesota the Hill Library is well worth a visit especially if you love books.

Thank you Mr. Hill,

Todd