An item-level inventory for all materials in this collection except for the glass plate negatives is available.
The bulk of this collection is materials related to the history of Seattle Pacific University including Seattle Pacific Alumni Association correspondence, assorted Alumni Association materials (programs, flyers and other epehemera), Seattle Pacific news clippings, postcards, student resolutions, and Seattle Pacific Cascade yearbook 1917-18 proofs and business records.
There are also approximately 300 glass plate negatives of Hill family and friends. Marconi News Service issues, "The Vista" Greenville College yearbook, "the Kuay" Queen Anne High School Yearbook, and a real estate wooden printing block for Hill family property on Queen Anne Hill are also part of this collection.
Free Methodist materials in this collection include Korean Free Methodist church correspondence 1971-1976, two Free Methodist tribute scrapbooks, and a few single issues of Free Methodist newsletters.
Collection is open for research.
A collection of Seattle Pacific College publications included in this donation were transferred to the library. The bulk of this was the Seattle Pacific College Bulletin, 1922-1976. In addition, a small number of copies of the following publications publications were also received: Seattle Pacific Falcon, Alum-News, Alumni Special Edition, Alumni News Magazine, Fellows Newsletter, Summer Session materials, and the SPC Catalog for 1917-18.
Cyril Dean Hill (1899-1990) moved with his family to Seattle at a young age. The Hill family settled on the north side of Queen Anne Hill. Cyril Hill attended Seattle Seminary, where he was business manager of the Cascade Yearbook. He graduated in 1917 from Seattle Seminary, and later earned a law degree from the University of Washington and an LL.M. from Harvard University.
Hill joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 1917. He served in the Reserves for 16 years, then spent 15 years on active duty with the Judge Advocate Corps. He retired from the Corps in 1955, after spending time in Washington D.C., Texas and Japan. While in Japan, Hill was an active supporter of the Japanese Free Methodist churches, helping to fund a church building in Tokyo and distributing aid packages donated by American churches in the aftermath of the Second World War. In 1955, Hill and his siblings donated the family land on Queen Anne Hill to Seattle Pacific College. A dormitory built on that land was named for the Hill family. Seattle Pacific College conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Hill in 1955. He remained active in the Free Methodist Church in later life, corresponding with Free Methodist congregations in Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea.
A biography of Cyril Hill, "The Hill family and their era," written by Joy Hill Pound in 1993, is available in the Seattle Pacific University Library Special Collections.