Elijah B. Hill

Elijah Bacon Hill was born on April 24, 1795, a son of Josiah Hill and Susanna Davis, who farmed at the south end of the Hill family land on the Bedford road, now Concord Road, just over the line in Bedford. As a boy he shared with his brothers Joseph and Artemas twenty acres his father bought for them in 1811 on the south side of Nutting's Pond, and in 1815, while still a minor, he bought four acres at the corner of the county road from Bedford and a town road from Timothy Jaquith for $164.50; he sold them at the same price to Rhoda Kemp in 1829 (see Rhoda Kemp House).

He married Lucy Johnson. Their children were Emery Elijah (1821), who settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania; Sylvester Silas (1827), who married Abby Sargent; Horace Josiah (1828), who died about 1852; and Lucy Rebecca (1831), who died in 1877. In 1829 the family lived in the house on his father's Billerica farm, the Josiah Hill House, described that November as "the house where Elijah B. Hill now lives." That December he took from his kinsman Dr. Joseph F. Hill, the "antient farm which has descended in the name of Joseph Hill for several generations," about two hundred acres, giving a mortgage of $4,000, sold fourteen acres of it to Sewall Stearns and eight to Jonathan Hill, and in February 1830 quitclaimed the rest back to Joseph for $500.

On November 7, 1831 his father settled the Billerica lands on him and his brother Artemas Hill. Elijah paid $800 for four tracts: the Jaquith lot of about twenty acres, the "School House Pasture" next to Job Hill, which he soon sold to William Whitford, fourteen acres of upland and meadow, and thirty acres by Jonathan Hill and Whitford. This was the "Old Farm" of 56 acres that he still held at his death. In the census of 1850 he was a farmer of 54 with real estate of $3,000.

He also built and dealt in land. On February 14, 1842 he bought from Lyman Haynes, Dudley Foster and Marshall Preston, for $250, one acre at the corner where the road from the centre to Concord turns south, and by 1853 had covered it with a row of five houses; the survivor is the Elijah Bacon Hill Central House at 55-57 Concord Road. In March 1846 he bought the Thomas Eames place, sixty acres with buildings between the road and the Concord River and a ten-acre lot across the road, at the guardian's auction for $1,500, and sold it that October to Isaac Roby of Reading for $1,700 (see Solomon Hill House). In 1848 he sold Artemas the pond woodlot, and in 1861 he sold the westernmost of his corner houses to William Richardson for $500.

Elijah Bacon Hill died on March 29, 1865, a widower. His will, made that February, left the household furniture to his daughter Lucy, $500 to his son Sylvester, the executor, and the rest equally to Emery, Sylvester and Lucy. The inventory valued the Old Farm at $1,000, sixteen acres of pasture and meadow at $600, the "Preston Land and Buildings 1 a." at $1,250, the Whiting land at $750 and a lot in Lowell at $200. Sylvester and Lucy released their shares in the corner houses to Emery that year.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 72, HILL 37
2. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), births p. 98: Emery Elijah, s. Elijah B. and Lucy, Oct. 20, 1821; Horace Josiah, 1828

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.