<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> <P> Another possibility involves the former adjutant general of Kentucky Samuel Ewing Hill, who was sent by the governor of Kentucky to see what was going on in reference to the Hatfields & McCoys family feud in 1887 . Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families, becoming headline news around the country, and compelling the governors of both Kentucky and West Virginia to call up their state militias to restore order . The governor of West Virginia once even threatened to have his militia invade Kentucky . Kentucky governor Simon Bolivar Buckner in response sent his adjutant general Sam Hill to Pike County, Kentucky to investigate the situation . Newspapers from around the country awaited word from Hill to find out "what in the Sam Hill was going on up there". </P>

Where did the saying what in the sam hill come from