Junius Hillyer

Junius Hillyer (April 23, 1807 – June 21, 1886) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who served two terms in the United States Congress. He was born in Wilkes County, Georgia, on April 23, 1807, the second son of Shaler and Rebecca (Freeman) Hillyer. His father died when he was fourteen years old, after which his mother moved the family to Athens, Georgia. This relocation to a growing educational and legal center shaped Hillyer’s early exposure to public life and the law.

Hillyer attended Franklin College in Athens, which later became the University of Georgia, and graduated in 1828. During his senior year he studied law, and he was admitted to the bar one month after his graduation. He initially began a law practice in Lawrenceville, Georgia, but after about a year returned to Athens. There he practiced in a judicial circuit that included some of the most prominent legal figures of antebellum Georgia, among them Thomas R. R. Cobb and William Hope Hull, founders of the University of Georgia School of Law, as well as Alexander H. Stephens, later Vice President of the Confederate States of America, and Robert Toombs, who would become the first Confederate States Secretary of State and a brigadier general. Hillyer maintained his law practice in Athens for nearly twenty years, establishing himself as a respected member of the Georgia bar.

In 1831 Hillyer married Jane Selina Watkins. The couple had five sons—one of whom died at about age thirty or thirty-one—and either three or four daughters. Their surviving sons achieved distinction in various fields, including Eben Hillyer, who became a noted physician and educator. Another son, George Hillyer, emerged as a prominent Georgia politician who commanded a regiment in the Confederate States Army at the Battle of Gettysburg and later served in the Georgia state legislature, as a judge, and as mayor of Atlanta. Reflecting his interest in the economic development of his native region, Junius Hillyer invested at an early date in the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company, first chartered in 1833 as the first railroad built in the state. The line eventually extended to a point near the old Creek Indian village of Standing Peachtree; because it was the end of the line, the settlement became known as “Terminus,” a community that, after several name changes, ultimately became the city of Atlanta.

Hillyer’s public career began in earnest in 1834, when, at the age of twenty-seven, he was elected solicitor general of the Western Judicial Circuit of Georgia. He sought a seat in the United States Congress in 1836 and again in 1838, but was unsuccessful in both campaigns. In 1841 he was appointed judge of the superior courts of Georgia’s Western Circuit, a position in which he presided from 1841 to 1845. During this period he also became active in educational governance; he served as a trustee of the University of Georgia from 1844 to 1858 and also held a trusteeship at Mercer University. In 1848 he moved his residence and law practice from Athens to Monroe, Georgia, while continuing to build his reputation as a jurist and civic leader.

Initially elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1850 as a Unionist, Hillyer was re-elected in 1852 as a Democrat, representing Georgia in the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1855. As a member of the Democratic Party representing Georgia, he contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American history, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents in the years leading up to the sectional crisis of the 1850s. During his second term he served as chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims, where he played a role in adjudicating and overseeing legislation related to disputed land titles and claims in the expanding United States.

After leaving Congress, Hillyer returned to legal and administrative service at the federal level. President James Buchanan appointed him solicitor of the United States Treasury, a senior legal post in which he served from 1857 until February 13, 1861. His tenure coincided with the mounting tensions that culminated in the secession of Southern states. When Georgia seceded from the Union in early 1861, Hillyer resigned his federal office and returned to his home state. This resignation effectively marked the end of his formal public service career, after which he devoted himself to private law practice.

Following the Civil War, Hillyer moved to Decatur, Georgia, where he established his permanent residence and continued to practice law. He remained a figure of local prominence, connected through his family, professional associations, and earlier investments to the legal, political, educational, and economic life of Georgia. He lived in Decatur for the remainder of his life, witnessing the Reconstruction era and the gradual transformation of the state and region in the late nineteenth century.

Junius Hillyer died at his home in Decatur on June 21, 1886. He was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, a resting place for many of the state’s notable political and civic leaders.