LONG ANSWER Watch enough westerns and you’re bound to hear some old timer utter the expression, “What in the Sam Hill is that!?” It’s 19th-century slang for the ‘devil’ or ‘hell’, so the real Sam Hill must have been quite a character to merit the euphemism. Except, there is no way of knowing who he was, or if there was even a real ‘Sam Hill’ in the first place. e first published mention is in a newspaper article from 1839, which reads: “What in sam hill is that feller ballin’ about?” e fact that the name isn’t capitalised may suggest it’s not referring to a real person, but that hasn’t stopped numerous contenders being put forward – the most common being a surveyor who had such a proclivity for cussing that his friends started using his name as a swear word.
MAN OF MYSTERY Rather than being the name of a Wild West hero, the elusive ‘Sam Hill’ may not have existed at all