M. C. (Mayton Clarence) Hillick

Mayton Clarence Hillick, born in 1859, is credited as the author of Practical Carriage and Wagon Painting, a how-to book on painting carriages, wagons, and sleighs. Library and archive records identify him as M. C. Hillick or Mayton Clarence Hillick, and editions of the book were published in Chicago by the Press of the Western Painter in 1898 and 1903.

His book is firmly rooted in skilled trade practice rather than literary showmanship. It covers factory work, lettering, ornamenting, varnishing, and tested formulas, suggesting a writer who wanted to preserve working methods in a form that painters could actually use on the job.

Little biographical information about Hillick seems easy to confirm beyond his name, birth year, and authorship of this book. Even so, the survival of Practical Carriage and Wagon Painting in major digital collections shows that his work remains a useful record of an important craft tradition from the horse-drawn vehicle era.