The founding family
Hilton was born in Kenyon on December 6, 1866. The Hiltons were among the village's first families: Addison Hilton was one of the four men who platted the village in 1856 and the first chairman of the township board in 1858, Stephen Hilton conducted the first school in 1859, and Lieut. Roscoe Hilton is on the Civil War rolls. Clifford was thirteen when the family moved to Fergus Falls in 1879.
Fergus Falls and the law
He graduated from Fergus Falls High School, took his law degree at the University of Wisconsin, and was admitted to the bar in both states. He practiced in Fergus Falls, served as city attorney and then as Otter Tail County attorney, and in 1912 went to St. Paul as a deputy attorney general.
Attorney General and Justice
When Attorney General Lyndon Smith died in 1918, Hilton was appointed to succeed him and was then elected five times on the Republican ticket, in 1918, 1920, 1922, 1924 and 1926, serving through 1927. In 1928 Governor Theodore Christianson appointed him to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he sat as an associate justice until 1943, the Depression and wartime years of the court. He retired to Florida and died there on April 5, 1946.