William Hillcourt - Personal Life

Personal Life

Hillcourt was born, the youngest of three sons of a building contractor, in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1900 under the name Vilhelm Hans Bjerregaard Jensen. Around 1930, he changed his name by anglicizing "Vilhelm", dropping "Jensen", and translating "Bjerregaard" into "Hill-court". His first published work was a poem about trolls and elves, printed by an Aarhus newspaper when he was nine years old. For Christmas 1910, Hillcourt's brother gave him a Danish translation of Scouting for Boys by Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement. He went on to earn the highest rank in Danish Scouting, Knight-Scout in 1918, at age 17. He was selected to represent his troop at the 1st World Scout Jamboree in Olympia in 1920 where he first met Baden-Powell, with whom he was later to work.

While Hillcourt studied pharmacy in Copenhagen, he became more involved in Scouting. As a Scout leader, he became a Scoutmaster, national instructor, writer and then the editor for the Danish Scouting journal. He wrote his first book, The Island, recounting his early Scouting experiences.

After deciding to experience Scouting around the world and to return home with the best ideas, Hillcourt worked his way through Europe and England and then arrived in the United States in February 1926. He was soon hired by the BSA's national office and worked for the BSA until he retired as a professional Scouter in 1965. In 1933 Hillcourt married Grace Brown, the personal secretary of Chief Scout Executive James E. West.