Jill M. Singleton was born in Victoria, British Columbia and worked as a field botanist and landscape architect there after graduation. In 1986 she moved to the Bay Area to take a Masters in Landscape Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. Working for several years as park planner for the East Bay Regional Park District, she particularly valued the historic landscape projects such as documenting the gardens at Lake Temescal for the National Register of Historic Places;as well as chairing the Fremont Historic Architectural Review Board. Two of the books in the Fremont local history series for Arcadia are completed, with another underway for 2010. The Niles book was an Arcadia bestseller and the Irvington book led to joining the Society of American Baseball Researchers (SABR). This latter led to recently completing research for a book length biography of Frank L. Chance, California's first member of the Baseball Hall of Fame; and to presenting a presentation at the 2009 SABR 39 Convention on 'Deadball and the Silent Filmmaker.'