Henry Villard

Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway.

He was born in Speyer, Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria. His parents moved to Zweibrcken in 1839, and in 1856 his father, Gustav Leonhard Hilgard , became a justice of the Supreme Court of Bavaria, at Munich. He belonged to the Reformed Church. His mother, Katharina Antonia Elisabeth Pfeiffer, was Catholic. While he had aristocratic tendencies, he shared the republican interests of much of the Hilgard clan. His granduncle Theodore Erasmus Hilgard had emigrated to the United States during a clan move of 18331835 to Belleville, Illinois the granduncle had resigned a judgeship so his children could be raised as freemen. Villard was also a distant relative of the physician and botanist George Engelmann who resided in St. Louis, Missouri.

Source: Wikipedia