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[[top margin]]FROM THE FLYING PIONEERS BIOGRAPHIES OF HAROLD E. MOREHOUSE[[/TOP MARGIN]]

JAMES D. HILL
Early Curtiss Pilot - Instructor

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James D. Hill was born at Scottdale, Pennsylvania March 2, 1885, where he attended local schools.  He was mechanically inclined, but in his youth was frail and sickly.  After finishing high school he started attending Layfayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, but did not like it there so he left and enrolled at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, where he took up mechanical engineering.  Later he had to leave due to ill health, so he returned to Scottdale and started to work as an automobile mechanic.

He developed an early interest in aviation and went to Cleveland, Ohio to see Glenn Curtiss fly on August 31st, 1910 and was very interested.  Later that year he moved to Portland, Oregon and there saw Charles Hamilton flying at a Fair.  Hill was so intrigued he went every day to see the flying and became determined to become an aviator.  His health would not permit this so he went to work as a farm hand doing outdoors labor in an effort to build himself up.

After 18 months of farm life he enrolled for flying lessons at the Curtiss School, North Island, San Diego, California in mid-February, 1913.  There he learned to fly from Instructors John D. Cooper and Francis "Doc" Wildman.  After completing the course Hill obtained F.A.I. pilot license No.234, dated May 28, 1913.  In October he was at the Curtiss School in Hammondsport, New York where

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