Lydia Hill

Lydia Hill's signature, 1869 (SCSU Archives)

Lydia Hill Shipman, 1880-1889 (Ancestry.com)

Lydia Jane Hill was born about 1853 to Jasper H. and Mahala Hill in Maine, where her mother was born and her father had farmed after immigrating from New Brunswick, Canada. She was the second of their seven children. The family had moved to a farm in Bellevue, Minnesota, by 1860. Lydia entered the Third State Normal School with its first students in September 1869. After graduating with its first class on June 30, 1871, she taught in local schools.

Later in the 1870s, Lydia married Charles Wesley Shipman, a Civil War veteran from Pennsylvania. The two made their home near Belle Prairie, Minnesota, where Charles had purchased a farm. Their only child, Jasper, was born in 1878. The family later moved to Washington state, where Lydia passed away in 1907. Jasper raised six children with his wife, Clara, and followed Charles into farming before becoming a construction contractor in Washington, where he spent the rest of his life.