Ralph Hill

Ralph Hill was, by family tradition, from Billericay, Essex, England, the town for which Billerica is named. Hazen thought the tradition probable, noting that a clergyman of the same name preached in Essex in the 1640s and 1650s. Hill was early at Plymouth, and as "Ralph Hill of Wellingsly" he sold a house and garden there on September 16, 1643. He was a freeman in Woburn by 1647 and served as a Woburn selectman in 1649, before joining the settlement of Shawshin as one of its earliest inhabitants. He married, as his second wife, Margaret Toothaker, the mother of Roger Toothaker. His children were Jane, born in England, who married Francis Littlefield of Woburn; Ralph Jr., who married his stepsister Martha Toothaker in 1660; Martha; Nathaniel; Jonathan, born in 1646; and Rebecca, who married Caleb Farley, son of George Farley.

In Shawshin Hill held one and a half of the twelve shares of the Dudley farm and lived on "the farm," a mile south-west of the village, his house standing a little west of the place where his descendant Mrs. Judkins lived in 1883; the land stayed in the Hill family and their Judkins heirs for nearly three centuries. His neighbor was Lt. William French, whom he called "brother" in his will. Hill signed the 1654 petition of the Shawshin settlers, and, first of the inhabitants as "Ralph Hill, Sen'.," the propositions of Cambridge dated February 1654/5 that the General Court confirmed. He was one of the selectmen in the first recorded list of town officers, in March 1659/60, and Farmer's 1816 memoir credits him with two years on the board.

He served on many of the early town's committees. In 1659 he, George Farley and Jonathan Danforth were chosen to hire the workmen for the first meetinghouse, and that November he, Farley and John Parker ran the line with Woburn. In 1661 he was on the committee to run the line next to Chelmsford, was one of four men seated in the deacons' seat, and bought, with his son and Farley, the three-hundred-acre Oakes farm; his house was one of the two places where the town herdsmen took and delivered the cattle. Before Billerica had a church, the Rev. John Fiske of Chelmsford recorded extending church privileges to Hill and Farley.

In April 1663 he gave the town half an acre of land for a burying ground. The town had named Lt. French and George Farley to treat with him "about a peece of land, about half an acre for a buring place," and on April 10 "Ralph Hill Sen'r gaue to the Towne half an acre of Land for a buring place, on condition that the Towne shall fence all against it Next unto his own Land." This was the origin of the Old South Burying Ground. He died just days later, on April 29, and is believed to have been the first person buried there: "his own body, doubtless, the first to be laid in the old 'south' burying ground," Hazen wrote. His widow Margaret died November 22, 1683.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 68: Hill family #1 (Ralph Hill Sr.), Billericay tradition, Woburn, burying ground
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 19: the tradition that Ralph Hill came from Billericay
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 27: Hill's second wife Margaret Toothaker; his will calls William French "brother"
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 22: Ralph Hill Sr. first signer of the acceptance of the Cambridge propositions, 1654/5
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 31: Ralph Hill Sr. held one and one-half shares of the Dudley farm
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 67: Ralph Hill Sr. gives half an acre for a burying place, April 1663
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 154: Hill on the committee to build the first meetinghouse, 1659
8. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 82: Hill, Farley and Parker run the Woburn line, 1659
9. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), deaths: Ralph Hill Sr., Apr. 29, 1663; Margaret, widow of Ralph Sr., Nov. 22, 1683
10. Farmer, Historical Memoir of Billerica (1816): Ralph Hill, early inhabitant, selectman two years