Theodore Erasmus Hilgard

[1] During the time of the French rule, he practiced law in Trèves, and, on the restoration of the Rhine Province to Germany, settled in Zweibrücken, where he held the appointment of associate justice of the court of appeals from 1821 till 1835.

At first he tried to discover which of the Rhenish or French vines were best adapted to the climate, but soon found the indigenous Catawba grape most suitable, and he produced a wine that acquired a high local reputation.

[2] Meanwhile, he gave special attention to the education of his children, whom he instructed personally in mathematics, languages and philosophy.- In 1851 he returned to Germany, having been invited by the Bavarian government to take part in recasting the law of mortgages of that country into a more modern form.

While on his farm in the United States he revived an early taste for poetry, and devoted a portion of his leisure to making translations of ancient and modern poems into German, some of which were published and received with high commendation, notably Ovid's Metamorphoses and "The Fire-Worshipers" from Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh.

Besides numerous legal and historical articles and minor poems contributed to American and European periodicals, he published: Several of his children went on to noted careers: He was a granduncle of United States journalist and financier Henry Villard.