"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." And then he said, that is what Libby's family and my family have done!
If anyone had
told me that I would be living on a ranch that was once a cotton plantation, I
would never have believed it. I had heard about Hills Prairie my entire life
from my grandmother Harriet Hill Turner who passed away in 1998. David and I
had trespassed in 1981 after listening to Harriet’s endless stories on a car
trip from
As we began to
plan for retirement, we thought about buying an old house near
To make a long story short, they agreed to sell it to us. From the moment we stepped on the land we could felt the history and the overall sprit of the place. It was the past, but also the future for us. It was simple, yet elegant. It had been redone in days past, but those renovations had aged. We found it livable, but not extravagant. The front porch might fall through any minute. The entryway was a beautiful center hall. A nice staircase revealed stairs well worn by Hill’s. David wondered aloud, “how many little Hills had slid down that banister.” Somehow Mom and I knew that Harriett and Sally, and Ben, and Eva had worn it down, among others.
According to Eva’s description, the home was built in 1856-7 and had
four tall chimneys at each end of the house with fireplaces upstairs and
down. The rooms had high ceiling room
and were 20 ft square with immense doors and windows. A little balcony opened
up from the upstairs hall. It took three
or four carpenters 18 months to build, and Adolph Jung, a
Then we saw the parlor and imagined it as described by Eva. We saw where the portrait of Sarah McGehee Hill hung.
Governor George R. Gilmer had this to say about her, “Sallie, the
second daughter of Micajah McGehee was the prettiest woman on the frontiers of
Then we went out to the cemetery where we recognized names of Hill’s, Hubbard’s, LeSueurs, and some we didn’t know. Parents, Grandparents, Children, Infants were there and most headstones in shambles. We felt their presence and Mom began to recall stories of some of the people and remember what she had heard of the tragic deaths of the children buried there.
A few months later, it was ours. We
began to spend weekends in the old house while we built our guest house.
Everyone who came to visit us on the land could feel the spirit of the place.
We immediately focused on how we could restore the home to its majesty while
still having a comfortable home in retirement. We found an architect who
specialized in historic renovation and, almost immediately, he suggested that
we find out as much as we could about the history of the house. We asked Mom to
go through her things and she began to transcribe bits and pieces of what she
found and send it to me. To keep it all together, I started a blog just for my
family so they could share what I had learned. Then, I explored the Internet
and talked to Bastropians who shared a wealth of information about the history
of the area and Hills Prairie. We were able to get several good descriptions of
the place written by relatives and our architect found pictures and
documentation which were made during the
Then something unanticipated began
to occur. The blog and the property became a magnet for other Hill descendants.
People either emailed with their stories and questions or just simply showed up
at the place. Since we are primarily there on weekends during our construction,
we have no way of knowing how many people we might have missed over the years.
We found descendants of the siblings of Wylie Hill and of his children who were
returning to the area to research their genealogy. I was compelled to explore
my own and easily was able to trace branches of the Hill family back to
As I read and documented, I became aware of that slaves were part of the story, and beloved by my family. I wondered what had become of those families. I had heard that some were still in the area, and I hoped to find them, But, I didn’t need to look for them; they were looking for some white Hills and found me. On a weekend around June 19th, our contractor called my husband to let him know that some descendants of Hill slaves were visiting our graveyard. My husband talked to them on the phone and got their contact information and we began our friendship.
During my first conversation with Rev. Gregg, he asked if I had any information on the Hill slaves. I didn’t think I did. But I went back and found and some key information. In 1850, Wylie Hill owned 36 slaves according to the census. I found the names of three of these slaves: Beryl who accompanied the Hill brothers on their prospecting tour; Edward mentioned in Wylie’s Will which was signed 3 days before his wedding, and Mary Ann who was a small child who came Wylie and Evaline from Georgia and was part of the family.
As the Black and White Hills have joined together to compare notes, these clues have helped them verify their oral history and research, and led me to information about the Terry’s Texas Rangers and published letters written by Hill Cousins from the Civil War. I learned of the slave David Crockett Hill who Wylie sent to war to be with his son Robert T. Hill, and nephews D.O. Hill, Robert E. Hill, J.W.F.Hill and T.A.W. Hill.
Each time we get together we marvel
at what we learn and how we feel connected. The
I knew my family in the
I will briefly go through my family history, mostly from family memoirs with other documented sources and then let Rev Greg tell what his research revealed.
According documented history (1) (5) and family memoirs (2)
(3) Hills Prairie which is four miles south of
In spring 1833 John Gilmer McGehee, a cousin and
brother-in-law of Wylie Hill, explored the prairie, and in 1835 he returned
with a colony of 140 people from
When they reached their destination they at once began to build houses and forts for protection against Indian depredations. Life for them was full of interest and excitement. Indian raids became more frequent and many times women and children for miles around were housed for days at a time in the strong stockade while the men went out to regain their stolen horses and cattle. Several times they recovered captured women and children
Wylie Hill was so thoroughly infatuated with life in this
new land that he determined to cast his lot with these other adventurous
souls. He bought 2220 acres of land from
Mrs. Sarah Jenkins, widow of Edward Jenkins after Jenkins had been scalped and
murdered either by Indians or as rumored by a half slave half Indian as revenge
for his killing Moses Rousseau in a knife fight (5) (6). The date of the
transaction as recorded is July 7, 1835, State of Coahuila, Dept. of Brazos,
Jurisdiction of Mina, in the Colony of Stephen F. Austin. His two older
brothers bought land further down the river near Smithville from the Burleson
league which became Lower Hills Prairie. Middleton and Thomas returned to
Shortly thereafter the massacre of Goliad and the fall of
the
Mrs. Minerva Hunt McGehee in relating her experience of the "Runaway Scrape" said: "One evening in camp, I was weary and heartsick - my husband perhaps in mortal danger, far from home, most of our provisions and all of our money gone – I felt that only death or worse than death, capture by the hated Comanches, awaited me. As I sat thus with my two helpless infants and a slave, apart from the other campers, I heard horses' hoofs, and looking up saw a splendid specimen of young manhood approaching. He stopped as he reached me and asked if I were the wife of Thomas G. McGehee. On hearing that I was he sprang from his horse, saying that his name was Wylie Hill, a cousin, and he was hurrying to join Sam Houston’s army. This meeting and his kind, encouraging words were as the balm of Goliad to my heart. He divided his purse with me and hastened on."
On April 26, 1836, Wylie fought in the Battle of San
Jacinto. He was one of the scouts appointed to overtake the escapees from
Wylie built a log cabin and in the winter of 1836 returned
to Georgia for his sweetheart, Evaline Hubbard, who was the eldest daughter of
the Hon. Robert Hubbard of Lexington, a member of the Georgia Legislature and
former Captain of Militia in that state. They were married on February 16, 1837
and made their way back to
The memoirs of my great grandfather and his sister included
amazing stories about their grandmother, Evaline. How foreign was life for her
in this new land and how she must have longed for her home in
Grandma was a Hubbard, and her
given name was Evaline. Grandpa had come to
Once her courage failed her
completely, and she wrote her father in
One can easily understand how her
courage could sometimes fail when one remembers some of the experiences she
passed thru. Once when all the men on
the place were absent, some Indians came and asked where they were. The women
shut themselves up inside the house, but the Indians kept on talking in their
broken English and asking many questions.
Grandma was excited and talked a lot. One of the Indians said to her,
“White squaw talk too much; maybe she lie.” On another occasion she was working
on a knitted garment, and in all her excitement she unraveled all she had done.
On still another occasion, she sent one of the house maids out the back way,
through the fields to a neighbor’s house about a mile away. When the neighbor
rode up, the Indians meekly left.
According to Eva, her grandmother was a wonderful
manager. Among the slaves given her by
Mr. Hill's mother was a little six year old girl, with the admonition that she
was to be brought up in the house and trained as a maid and seamstress and
MaryAnn did credit to her old mistress's foresight and interest and to her
young mistress's instruction. She was
taken back to
Wylie Hill wrote this in his Will a few days before his wedding:
"Now my dear wife, I have left old man Edward to you during your natural life. I want him treated well and never to be put out under an overseer. I wish for him to do anything he can for you, but not to be treated ill by anybody, and let him have time to make him a little crop, and land convenient for him to tend, he has been a faithful slave to me, and I want him favored in his old age. I should have left him to have served nobody but I have seen the evil of it they have come to suffer, and when it is the will of God to take you, I wish for him and his wife to go live with any one of my children that they wish to, that will treat them well, let them have their choice, he helped me get what I have got. If my wife wants my gig and harness let her have it, also now my dear children and wife I never want any of you to have any coldness nor any hard thoughts among you about what I leave behind, for my property I worked for, it wasn't given to me. I have left you all a plenty: and took care of it as I could, and I wish to dispose of it as I see proper. Signed Feb 13, 1837 and witnessed by T.J. Walton, Thomas O. Christian, and Thomas B.J.Hill.
(T.J. Walton and Thomas Christian were cousins of Wyle and T.B.J was his older brother.)
In 1843 Mr. Hill installed the first cotton gin. The best school advantages obtainable were given the children. The school house was built near the Spring Branch and children came from miles around.
In 1845 and addition was built to the log cabin of the Wylie
Hill home of real lumber, sealed and painted, and Mrs. Hill said that she was
prouder of that addition than she was of the big house which was built in 1856
and 1857. Between 1845 and 1850 Mrs.
Hill's mother, Mrs. Nancy Hubbard, and her three brothers, Miller, Gus and
Robert, and her sister, Damarius, who later married John W.Pope of
In 1845
From the account of
John
The "Old South" was now in its heyday. Parties, dinners, affairs were the custom. Relatives and friends came from miles and there was always room for every one. In 1859 Sallie Hill was married to W. C. Powell from Holly Springs, Miss. Mr. Hill gave his daughters large farms and slaves as bridal presents, besides mules, horses, cows, etc. How little did they dream that the dark days of strife were drawing near and nearer and that these glamorous and prosperous times were to be only memory?
The Hill cousins attended Bastrop Military Institute. When the first call was sounded for the southern soldiers, most of them enlisted in Co. D. Terry's Texas Rangers. We learned from the Terry’s Texas Rangers website and the Black Hill descendants that a slave, David Crockett Hill was sent to war with Robert Theus Hill and his Cousins, D.O. Hill and Robert E. Hill. There exists letters written home by Bob E. Hill to his sister which were published by one of their descendants and mention Crockett’s well wishes to his sweetheart. (6)
The second son of Mr. And Mrs. Wylie Hill was Augustus
Middleton Hill and my great-great grandfather. When the war broke out he was
only 14 years of age. He continued his studies for two years in the
According to Ben and Eva, when their father started off to war, his
“mammy” hugged and kissed him and gave him a ten dollar gold piece, telling him
“don’t never spend it unless you have to; you may be taken prisoner, then you
will need it.” This nurse was Mary Ann and Ben remembers that she came to visit
us when he about 10 years old. She was a real lady, and they treated her as we
would have treated the Queen of
After the War, the family fell on hard times and it become
difficult to maintain the land. Initially they brought sharecroppers from
1: Leave from Ancient Oaks; by Eva Hill LeSueur Karling
2: Memoirs of Eva Hill LeSueur Karling
3: Memoirs of Rev. Benjamin Oglivie Hill
4: Handbook of
5: History of
6: Recollections of Early
7: Master’s Thesis of Pauline Scott Goldman