Hitchcock

to shape a system which would suit the needs of
the people and at the same time would possess
consistency and permanence. For these charac-
teristics his associates sometimes likened him to
John Marshall and Roger B. Taney.

{.Pioneer and General Hist, of Geauga County
(1880) ; Ohio Archaeol. and Hist. Quart., Jan. 1923;
Henry Howe, Hist. Colls, of Ohio (1908), I, 687; C.
B. Galbreath, Hist, of Ohio (1925), vol. II; E. 0. Ran-
dall and D. J. Ryan, Hist, of Ohio (1912), vols. IV and
V; F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale Coll, vol.
V (1911), which is in error as to date of death; M. L.
J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family
(1894); Ohio State Journal, Mar. 7 and n, 1853;
Painesville Telegraph, Mar. 9, 1853.] H.C.H.

HITCHCOCK, PHINEAS WARRENER

(Nov. 30, i83i-July 10, 1881), Nebraska pi-
oneer and politician, was born in New Lebanon,
Columbia County, N. Y., the son of Gad and
Nancy (Prime) Hitchcock. His father, fourth
in descent from Luke Hitchcock who came to
New Haven about 1644, had fought in the War
of 1812. Phineas was only a plain farmer's son,
but he was accorded for the time excellent edu-
cational advantages, and in 1855 he received his
bachelor's degree from Williams College. There-
after for two years he studied law in Rochester,
N. Y., making a living by reporting for one of
the local papers. In 1857, when the western
boom was at its crest, he moved to Omaha, Ne-
braska Territory, then a frontier village without
even a railroad. Here he took up the practice of
his profession, adding somewhat to his income
as a lawyer by conducting also a real-estate and
•insurance business. A Republican of strongly
anti-slavery tendencies, he participated in the
work of organizing his party in the territory,
aided in establishing the first Republican paper
in Omaha, and went as delegate to the second
Republican National Convention. This loyalty to
party was rewarded in 1861 by an appointment
as federal marshal for Nebraska Territory, in
1864 by election as territorial delegate to Con-
gress, and in 1867, when Nebraska became a
state, by another federal appointment, this time
as surveyor-general for the district of Nebraska
and Iowa.

In the rough-and-tumble combats of pioneer
politics Hitchcock soon proved that he was not
without skill. In 1871 he emerged the victor
from a four-cornered contest for the United
States senatorship, because twelve Democratic
members of the legislature had preferred him to
the "regular" candidate. As senator, however, he
was thoroughly "regular," and hardly distin-
guished. Probably his most notable success came
in 1872, when he carried through the Senate his
pet measure, the timber-culture act He was
much interested, also, in the ambitions of new

Hitchcock

territories to become states; but only in the case
of Colorado was he identified with a measure of
this kind that passed. In 1877, when he came up
for reelection, he found the opposition to him in
the legislature both bitter and strong. It was
openly charged that bribery had won him his
seat six years before, and that he was an obedi-
ent tool of the railroads. Of the latter charge
probably no prominent Nebraska politician of
the time could have been fully cleared, but the
bribery charge was not traced directly to any
fault of Hitchcock himself, whatever others may
have done for him. He was not reflected.

Hitchcock was a forceful writer and speaker,
tenacious of his opinions, much beloved by his
friends, and cordially hated by his enemies. For
several years he was interested in the Omaha
Republican, both as part owner and as con-
tributor. He did his share towards the shaping
of political thinking in the state. Following his
defeat for reelection to the Senate, he turned his
attention to business, but not for long. He was
devoted to his family, and family misfortunes—
the death in 1877 of his wife, Annie (Monell)
Hitchcock, whom he had married in 1857, soon
after his removal to Nebraska, and in 1880 of his
daughter Grace—left him a broken man. He
died before he was fifty. Thirty years later his
son, Gilbert M. Hitchcock, was elected to the
United States Senate from Nebraska as a Demo-
crat.

[Sketch of Hitchcock by his son Gilbert, in Trans,
and Reports Nebr. State Hist. Soc,t vol. I (1885); J.
S. Morton and Albert Watkins, Illus. Hist, of Nebr.,
I (1905), 49S-97J T. W. Tipton, "Forty Years of Ne-
braska," Proc. and Colls. Nebr. State Hist. Soc., 2 ser.,
IV (1902); A. C. Edmunds, Pen Sketches of Ne-
braskans (1871); Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1938;; M,
L. J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family
(1894) ; Omaha Daily Herald, July 12, 1881.]

J.D.H.

HITCHCOCK, RAYMOND (Oct. 22,1865-
Nov. 25,1929), actor, son of Charles and Celestia
(Burroughs) Hitchcock, was one of a large
number of stage performers who made them-
selves, through the force of comic personality,
the central figures in musical comedy, extrava-
ganza, and other forms of miscellaneous enter-
tainment that began to dominate the theatre in
the last years of the nineteenth century. He was
born in Auburn, N. Y., and after some attempts
at amateur acting and a brief career in business
as a shoe salesman and department-store clerk,
he first entered the stage door of a theatre in
1890 as a chorus singer with a popular organi-
zation of that day known as the Carleton Opera
Company. For a while he played minor char-
acters in a considerable number of musical pieces,
and now and then he was seen in speaking plays,

78