Among the twenty-one women who graduated from the agricultural course prior to 1896, one stands out for how little we know of her: Susanna Anderson Hillman (M.A.C. ’91). Sadly, what remains of her story is a brief and tragic one.
Susanna Anderson, known as Susie to her family and friends, was born in 1865. I have not been able to determine where she grew up, nor anything about her family. Unlike the other women in this group, who were either local residents or related to a member of the faculty, her connection to the Michigan Agricultural College remains unclear.
She seems to have entered the College in 1886 and completed three years of study before marrying a fellow Aggie, Fred Hebard Hillman (1863–1954, M.A.C. ’88, M.S. ’91). Fred served as Instructor in Zoology at M.A.C. from 1888 to 1889, assisting Professor A. J. Cook in entomology. In July 1889, he resigned to become the Professor of Entomology and Botany for the University of Nevada at Reno, that state’s land-grant agricultural and mechanical school, while also serving as Entomologist and Botanist in the Nevada Experiment Station.1
At Reno in 1890, Susanna gave birth to a son, Willits Anderson Hillman. The boy was named for Edwin Willits, president of M.A.C. from 1885 to 1889.2
In March 1891, she returned to Michigan, leaving her infant son with his paternal grandparents in Tecumseh so she could complete her studies. She graduated in the Class of 1891. Fred received his master’s degree from M.A.C. the same year, but it is unclear if he returned to campus—I have found no record of him taking a formal leave from Reno, though his frequent Experiment Station publications lapse between September 1890 and January 1892. The Lansing State Republican implies Susie traveled to Lansing without him.3
With her degree completed, a healthy child, and a husband who was department chair at a growing university, Susie’s future seemed full of promise. But it was not to be.
Early in 1892, she fell ill with breast cancer. She and Fred went to San Francisco for treatment, and later that year she traveled to Ithaca, New York, then regarded as home to some of the best specialists in the field. Her illness, however, “baffled the skill of the best physicians,” and she died there in late March 1893, more than two thousand miles from her family.† She was buried at East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, in a plot she shares with Alice Fitzpatrick Anderson (1873–1903). Records describe Alice as the wife of a James W. Anderson from England—perhaps Susie’s sister, sister-in-law, or cousin, though I have found no confirmation.4
Less than nine months after Susie’s death, Fred remarried, to Marian Miller of Portsmouth, Ohio. Today, several user-created family trees on Ancestry.com list Marian as Willits’ mother, omitting Susanna entirely—as if she had never existed. Even though her life was brief and so much of her story remains missing, Susanna Anderson’s place among The Twenty-One is worth remembering.5
This author welcomes additional information on Susanna Anderson Hillman. If you have any to contribute, please drop a message in the comment box below.
- LSR, 28 Jun 1889, p. 4. Yakeley (1900), p. 64. ↩︎
- Reno Gazette–Journal, 8 Sep 1890, p. 3. LSR, 3 Mar 1891, p. 1. ↩︎
- LSR, 3 Mar 1891, p. 1; 12 Aug 1891, p. 1. Yakeley (1900), p. 71. USDA Bulletin #1199, List of Bulletins of the Agricultural Experiment Stations, p. 92. ↩︎
- San Francisco Chronicle, 17 Apr 1892, p. 21. Nevada State Journal (Reno), 1 Apr 1893, p. 3. Findagrave.com, accessed 30 Sep 2025. ↩︎
- Reno Gazette–Journal, 21 Dec 1893, p. 3. ↩︎
- † New York State Death Index lists Susanna’s date of death as March 29, 1893. Elida Yakeley’s Catalogue of Officers and Graduates of Michigan Agricultural College (1900 et seq.) gives it as March 30, and incorrectly places her death at Reno—a rare error in an otherwise reliable reference. This small contradiction is another example of how Susanna’s history is not well documented.↩︎
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