Background
William Hill was born on September 13, 1741 in Belfast, Ireland. While he was a child, his family emigrated to York County, Pennsylvania, but moved to New Acquisition (later York County), South Carolina.
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ironmaster military politician Soldier
William Hill was born on September 13, 1741 in Belfast, Ireland. While he was a child, his family emigrated to York County, Pennsylvania, but moved to New Acquisition (later York County), South Carolina.
In New Acquisition Hill learned the trade of iron manufacturing.
In April 1762 Hill took out a land grant for 100 acres on Bowers Mill Creek. Before the Revolution he acquired grants aggregating some 5, 000 acres, in various localities, but mainly near Nanny's Mountain, where iron ore was believed inexhaustible.
With Isaac Hayne he began ironworkson Allison's Creek, and in March 1776 secured a loan of £1000 currency from the South Carolina treasury to complete it. In 1779 he advertised Aetna Furnace in blast, offering--wholesale or retail--farm tools, smiths' tools, kitchenware, swivelguns, and cannon up to four-pounders with their balls. He also advertised for a hundred negroes, but is said to have had to send "all the way to Troublesome Iron Works in Virginia" for labor. The furnace operated on the catalan plan, the ore being reduced with charcoal from Hill's timber lands.
In 1780 he supplied most of the different kinds of cannon balls used at the siege of Charleston. Although carefully guarded, the ironworkswere burned by the British in June 1780, and Hill lost his home, grain mill, sawmills, negro houses, and ninety negroes. Leaving his family in a log hut, he joined General Thomas Sumter as lieutenant-colonel of militia and soon after fought at Williamson's Plantation. He distinguished himself at Rocky Mount, and although wounded in the arm at Hanging Rock, was present at King's Mountain and fought at Fishdam Ford and Blackstock's.
After the Revolution he served many terms in the South Carolina legislature. In 1783 he was a justice for Camden District, and from 1785 to 1799 he was a member of the county court of York. He rebuilt Aetna Furnace in 1787 and built Aetna Furnace the next year, utilizing a simple method of blowing his fires by a fall of water, which gave a more regular blast than bellows, without freezing. Besides slaves, he employed miners, founders, woodcutters, and colliers, whom he paid in iron.
Since the nearest river landing from which he could ship his product was at Camden, seventy miles away, Hill became active in transportation schemes. In 1782 he was a member of the House committee on improvement of inland navigation; he was a charter member of the Santee canal company and of the Catawba company, and commissioner for making navigable the Broad. In 1795 Hill and the executors of Hayne advertised the ironworks for sale, with brick house, gristmill, sawmills, and 15, 000 acres of land; but in 1798 he was still operating and sold to the state fifty horsemen's swords and fifteen field-pieces with cannon balls. In 1815, "having waited near thirty years, " as he said, for certain errors in Revolutionary history to be corrected, he undertook the task himself and dictated his memoirs, largely to justify General Sumter.
He is buried in an unmarked grave at Bethel Presbyterian Church, near York.
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Hill was a member of the Presbyterian Church.
The Draper Manuscripts described Hill as a man of 5-feet, 9-inches in height, thin, with a rather large nose and slow of speech. Elsewhere, he is said to have had a vigorous personality. He often spoke in the legislature and he wielded great influence in his community.
Hill was survived by four sons, two daughters, and his widow who was Jane McCall.
His son, Solomon, died in 1825, leaving his wife, Nancy, and several children. It has been said that perhaps he died in Mississippi where his son, William R. , was living in Madison County. It has not been determined where Robert Hill finally settled, but William, who "went West, " settled in Ohio, while Andrew remained in York County and is interred in Bethel Cemetery. Later, Andrew's widow, Isabella Juliet, son Robert C. , daughter Isabella, along with married daughter, Elizabeth (Mrs. James L. ) Donaldson, moved to Tippah County, Mississippi.
Another son, Franklin Giles Hill, moved his family to Tippah County prior to January 1853 when he purchased land there. He and his wife, Elizabeth Wallace, were parents of eleven children, three of whom were born in Mississippi. The children grew up there and all but one married and remained there the rest of their lives. Later, one son went to Oklahoma, remained single and died there. One daughter and her husband moved their family to Texas in the 1890s.