Background
He was born in Parramatta to William Hill and Mary Johnson, both emancipated convicts.
He was born in Parramatta to William Hill and Mary Johnson, both emancipated convicts.
He was a carpenter"s apprentice and by the late 1820s was managing William Wentworth"s Vaucluse estate. He later became a butcher and also owned an orchard at Lane Cove. In 1848 he acquired 76,000 acres on the Liverpool Plains.
In 1868 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Canterbury, where he remained until his defeat in 1877.
In 1880 he was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council. Hill died in Sydney in 1895.
A close supporter of Henry Parkes, he was a founding member of the Aborigines Protection Board in 1883.