George W. Hill, Nineteenth Century Knox County Indiana Farmer

Christie Ann (Hill) Russell

George W. Hill, fourth child of John [R.S.] and Mary Ann "Polly" (Clark) Hill was born, Tuesday, July 2, 1816 in Paoli township of what was then Washington County, Indiana Territory, later to become Orange County in the new state of Indiana.¹ That was "the year without a summer" so called by Robert Ripley in his "Believe It or Not" column.

"The eruption of Mt. Temboro, East India, blew 50 cubic miles of dust into the air, killing 66,000 people and clouding the skies all over the earth. Crops refused to ripen, trees bore no fruit and cattle froze to death in the fields."²

George’s father, John [R.S.] Hill and his maternal uncle, George Clark, each purchased 200 acres of farm land adjacent to each other on the Busseron/Washington township line. John’s land had three springs that fed from the hillside running down to join Maria Creek and he named his farm "Three Spring Lot." Raising live stock and corn necessitated transporting them to markets by flatboat down the Wabash, into the Ohio and finally down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.³ Upon returning from such a trip accompanied by others including, James Polk, in May 1825, John became ill with "The Fever" from drinking the river water and within a week died,⁴ leaving Polly with nine children ages 18 months to 14 years to raise alone. His Nuncupative Will committed to writing June 1^st 1825 was filed in Knox County Circuit Court on 4^th June 1825.⁵

In time the children grew up and married with most of them remaining in Knox County. George W. stayed on the farm with his mother, was a Justice of the Peace, and Constable. He was "a faithful adherent to the doctrines of [the Christian Church] as the teaching of the scriptures, from attending the debate between Alexander Campbell and Robert Dale Owen" and served as an elder in that denomination in Knox County, later in Jasper County, Missouri, and lastly in Crawford County, I Ilinois. George married Indiana Piety, daughter of Samuel Duncan Piety and Eliza Hodgen, on 24 August 1852 in Knox County. George added a fractional piece of acreage to his holdings in 1854.⁶ Family tradition has stated that George raised corn and rafted it to New Orleans and returned by foot with his purchases in bags having sold his corn and the timber from the raft.⁷

From the Population census of 1850, 1860, 1870 and from the special Agriculture Production census⁸ of the same period of Knox County, a picture of a mid-nineteenth century farm family can be drawn. In the 1850 Census, George Hill was single man, 34 years old, living with his mother, Mary Ann, aged 58 and the orphaned son, Elliott Palmer, of his recently deceased sister, Nancy who had married Joshua Palmer.⁹ The next farm over was that of his sister, Mary Ann and her husband, William W. Harper, and children, George Franklin and Mary Elizabeth. By 1860, George was enumerated with his wife, Indiana Piety¹⁰, their four children, John R., Eliza J., Mary, and Samuel, [Cora was not enumerated as she was not born until November after the census was taken] his mother, Mary Ann, his nephew, Elliott Palmer, and a young neighbor, Elijah Conn, the future husband of his cousin, Margaret Clark. It is quite possible that George and his younger brother, John M.L., rafted corn together before John moved across the Wabash River to Crawford County Illinois in 1845.

In the 1860 Census of Knox County, George W. aged 43, Indiana (Piety) 30 with John Riley, 6, Eliza Jane, 4, Mary L. 3 , Samuel Piety, 1 and Mary ( his mother), 70. On 4 September, 1863, Indiana died at the age of 32. She is buried in the Ockiltree Cemetery. George was a 47 year old widower left to care for his five children, the youngest daughter, Cora, not yet 3 years old and his widowed mother. In 1863 George W. was named administrator for his nephew, John Clark, and guardian of John’s two minor children, William and Joseph. In 1866, Mary (Clark) Hill died and was buried next to John in Ockiltree Cemetery. The Civil War years came along and by the 1870 Census taken on July 16^th George had just celebrated his 54^th birthday, his mother and wife had both died¹¹ and his five children are listed under his name.

In the Fall of 1872 George migrated with his children to Jasper County, Missouri along with several families from Knox County. He purchased an 80 acre farm near his sister, Rebecca, and her husband, Ferdinand Hollingsworth. The following poem was written by John Riley Hill, son of George W. Hill and Indiana Piety when he returned to Knox County to live in 1924:¹²