Ordway Hilton was the sixth President of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners. |
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Mr. Hilton was born in 1913 and grew up in Evanston, Illinois. He majored in mathematics at Northwestern University and received a master's degree in statistics from the same university in 1937.
Mr. Hilton was the first questioned document examiner in the then new crime laboratory of the Chicago Police Department. In 1944, while still on active duty as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he attended the second meeting of the ASQDE in the Montclair, New Jersey, home of Albert S. Osborn. |
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In 1946, Mr. Hilton became associated with Elbridge Stein, the first secretary of the ASQDE, in his private practice in New York City. He continued the practice alone when Mr. Stein retired in 1951. In 1979, Mr. Hilton moved his practice to Landrum, South Carolina.
A prolific writer of journal articles and professional papers, Mr. Hilton authored one of the best known texts in the field, Scientific Examination of Questioned Documents in 1956, and a revised edition of the text in 1982. He also authored Detecting and Deciphering Erased Pencil Writing. Mr. Hilton was a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners. He was instrumental in establishing the Questioned Documents Section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS). From 1959 to 1960, Mr. Hilton served as the tenth president of the AAFS. He is one of the few AAFS Fellows to be named a Distinguished Fellow and one of only four questioned document examiners to ever receive this honor. In 1980, he was the first recipient of the AAFS Questioned Documents Section Award, which would be named in his honor. Ordway Hilton passed away in 1998. |
