Samuel Hill

Samuel Hill was born in Billerica on February 18, 1671/2, the son of Ralph Hill and Martha Toothaker and a grandson of the settler Ralph Hill. He grew up on "the farme" south of his grandfather's that his father had bought from William Baker in May 1656, on the west side of the road to Concord above the Concord River; its house was one of the town's garrisons in King Philip's War and, Henry Hazen wrote, "stood with its ancient windows, until after 1850." When his father died on April 9, 1695, the farm passed to Samuel, and it stayed with his descendants for well over a century.

He married a wife named Deborah, whose maiden name Hazen did not find. Their children were Deborah, born in 1705, who married Samuel Whiting in 1729; Ralph, born September 16, 1707; Martha, Rebecca, who married Isaac Marshall; Sarah, who married David Baldwin; Samuel, born in 1716; Hannah; Ursula, who married Jacob Walker; and Elizabeth, who married Abraham Jaquith. Deborah Hill died on June 27, 1748.

Hill was one of the leading men of the town for half a century. He served fifteen years on the Select Board between 1708 and 1729, and he was a deacon of the church and, as Hazen put it, "Captain of the militia, though often designated corporal." When the town voted on September 15, 1737 to build its third meeting house, "Deacon Samuel Hill" headed the building committee chosen that November, with Benjamin Tompson, Joshua Abbott, Ensign Benjamin Shed and Sergeant Benjamin Frost; the new house was to be sixty feet by forty and "26 feet between joynts."

He is probably the builder of the house that bears his name, the Deacon Samuel Hill House, which stood on the farm at what became 239 Concord Road. Its framing points to a date after 1700; the Massachusetts Historical Commission put it about 1725, and Charles E. Stearns thought about 1700 more likely. By a deed of January 3, 1732/3, the winter his son Ralph married Mehitable Patten, he gave Ralph the southerly part of the farm. In time there were two houses on the Hill farm; the newer one is remembered as the Solomon Hill House. In 1973 the Deacon Samuel Hill House was moved to 33 Riverhurst Road, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

Captain Samuel Hill died on August 4, 1755, without a will, and on September 22 his son Ralph, "gentleman," was appointed administrator. The appraisers listed an old firelock, books, beds, pewter, cider barrels, husbandry tools, a chair and harness, a pair of oxen, three cows and "an old mare saddle & bridle." His real estate, valued at 572 pounds 18 shillings 4 pence, began with the homestead of fifty-eight acres "together with the Buildings thereon Standing," bounded east on the highway, north by Peter Hill, west by the Concord River and south by Capt. Ralph Hill, with "a small Island" in the river, and included nearly sixty-five acres across the road, river meadow and a lot in Tewksbury. The committee advised that it all be settled on Ralph, the eldest son, "there being no other son known of in New England," and Ralph paid his sisters and their heirs their shares. Ralph in turn left the old house to his son William and the newer one to his son Solomon Hill.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 69, HILL 6 (Samuel: deacon and captain, wife Deborah, children, death 1755)
2. Hazen, Genealogical Register p. 68, HILL 2 (his father Ralph Hill Jr. buys the Baker farm, 1656; the garrison house)
3. Hazen, list of selectmen, p. 306 (Samuel Hill, 1708-29, 15 years)
4. Hazen, p. 175: building committee for the third meeting house, 1737 (Deacon Samuel Hill)
5. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), births p. 101 (Samuel, s. Ralph Jr. and Martha, Feb. 18, 1671-2)
6. Vital Records of Billerica, deaths p. 369 (Samuel, Capt., Aug. 4, 1755)
7. Middlesex probate case 11510 (1755): administration, inventory and settlement of the estate of Capt. Samuel Hill
8. Wikipedia: Deacon Samuel Hill House (NRHP 1990)