Jonathan Hill II

Jonathan Hill (1795-1870) was the machinist who turned the old grist mill at Hill's Mills in South Billerica into a machine shop making leather-splitting machines. He was born on December 22, 1795, a son of Job Hill and Susanna Blanchard, and grew up on his father's farm on the old road to Bedford, now Concord Road, beside the family mill. Hazen gives that date in his father's entry; his own entry has 1804, the year of a cousin of the same name, but the census of 1850, which gives his age as 54, agrees with 1795.

In 1819 he bought from Francis Cook, for $300, twenty acres on the east side of the road from the meeting house to Concord, which he sold in 1835 to the blacksmith Samuel Cole. On September 10, 1835 John Nichols released to him the grist mill at Hills Mills, with its rights to the water running from Nutting's Pond and "the Grist mill apparatus & Turning Lathe." According to Hazen, he began soon after 1830 to manufacture a machine for splitting leather, invented and patented by Samuel Parker, which "has had a very wide sale in this and in other countries, being almost indispensable in the manufacture of leather." The shop kept several mechanics. In 1844 he sold the machinist Joseph Dane a half acre with a dwelling house on the Bedford road, the Joseph Dane House, and in 1850 the mechanic John Dane lived in his household.

In April 1839 he married Laura W. Hill, a daughter of Brewer Hill; their children were James Williams, born in 1841, and Laura, born in 1843. When his father died in 1842 Jonathan was executor and residuary legatee under his will and took the homestead farm on the west side of the road, with the Job Hill House and its barn. The census of 1850 lists him as a machinist with real estate of $6,000, living with his wife, their two children, his sister Asenath, his wife's brother John B. Hill and John Dane. He was a selectman in 1845-1847 and again in 1848-1851, was styled "esquire" in the deeds of the 1850s, and lent money on mortgages, among them one on the new house of Stephen Winter on Charnstaff Lane in 1850 and one on Henry Sperry's tavern stand in front of the meeting house in 1855.

On October 15, 1853 he sold the mill and machine shop for $3,000 to his wife's younger brother, Charles H. Hill, who carried on the business, and took back a mortgage that was paid off in 1866. In 1868 he and Laura sold Charles a lot with part of the old farmhouse on the east side of the road, the Jonathan & Laura Hill House. Jonathan Hill died on May 17, 1870. His will, made in September 1869, left $100 each to his son and daughter and everything else to his wife, and in January 1871 she sold the homestead farm with its buildings to Thomas E. Perrin of Andover for $7,000. Hazen wrote in 1883 that she was living in Boston.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 72, HILL 34
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 281: Jonathan Hill's leather-splitting machine shop
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 71, HILL 24 (Job Hill and his children)

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.