<P> An article in the New England Magazine in December 1889 entitled "Two Centuries and a Half in Guilford, Connecticut" mentioned that, "Between 1727 and 1752 Mr. Sam . Hill represented Guilford in forty - three out of forty - nine sessions of the Legislature, and when he was gathered to his fathers, his son Nathaniel reigned in his stead" and a footnote queried whether this might be the source of the "popular Connecticut adjuration to' Give' em Sam Hill'?" </P> <P> The millionaire Samuel Hill, a businessman and "good roads" advocate in the Pacific Northwest, became associated with the phrase in the 1920s . A reference appeared in Time magazine when Hill convinced Queen Marie of Romania to travel to rural Washington to dedicate Hill's Maryhill Museum of Art . The fact that "Father of Good Roads" Samuel Hill hadn't been born when the figure of speech first appeared in a publication rules out the possibility that he was the original Sam Hill in question . </P> <P> A possible origin for the phrase "Sam Hill" is the surveyor Samuel W. Hill (1819--1889). Hill allegedly used such foul language that his name became a euphemism for swear words . In the words of Charles Eschbach, "Back in the 1850s the Keweenaw's copper mining boom was underway . There were about a dozen men who pretty much ran the Keweenaw . They were mining company agents, the' go between' for the investors from Boston and the actual mining production people . Their names were attached to every report sent back to eastern investors . Among these company agents was a man named Samuel W. Hill . Sam was a geologist, surveyor, and mining engineer and had considerable power in the Keweenaw ." </P> <P> According to author Ellis W. Courter, Samuel Hill "was an adventurer, explorer, miner, and surveyor . He had worked with Christopher C. Douglas and Douglas Houghton on the early State survey . His judgment was respected . Although he was a rough character, he possessed a big heart and in the fall of 1847 had risked his life to help avert a threatened food shortage in the Copper Harbor district . Generally he was regarded as a hero throughout the entire Copper Country, however, he was contemptuous of all the praise that was heaped upon him . Hill also gained a reputation as being one of the most blasphemous and obscene swearers in the Keweenaw Peninsula . Although he had a colorful vocabulary and told many a good story of his early adventures, his ubiquitous use of lurid cuss words became legendary . Whenever friends or neighbors retold his colorful tales in more polite society, they had to tame his unmentionables by substituting the sinless sounding words' Sam Hill' . In time the expression,' What the Sam Hill' spread far beyond the Copper Country . Today it has become a part of the American language . Few who utter these words ever heard of Samuel Hill, or know that he was the unconscious originator of a sinless synonym for profanity ." </P>

Where did the saying what in the sam hill