Papa had entered the war when he was sixteen. He had been attending the Bastrop Military Institute, but when the call came for sicteen year old men he joined Debray's regiment. Papa's brother Robert Theus Hill had benn in the army from the first years.

He was wounded in one leg, after having two horses shot dead under him. He with other soldiers were sent down to grandfather Holmes (plantation) to recuperate. It didn not take long for Grandfather to find that Papa was of the Hill family of Wilkes and Ogethorpe County, Georgia. Three of Grandfathers Aunts (Popes) had married three Hilll men (Grandpa's uncles) and 2 Pope men had married 2 Hill girls. So he was taken right to into the family. He called Mama "cousin Lizze" and she called him "cousin Gussie", and their romance began.

After the war was over Papa went to Baylor College at Waco. I heard some of the family one time laugh and say that Papa's commencement Oration was a tribute or Eulogy to Sam Houston., and that Grandfather hated Sam Houston so they never let him know the subject of the address.