Alexander Hill, Jr. ~ Index

Alexander Hill Jr., son of Alexander Hill and Elizabeth Currie Hill, was born March 1^st, 1811 at Johnston, Renfrewshire Abby Parish, Scotland. When he was ten he moved to Lanask, Canada, where he and his father and brothers cleared off the timber, farmed and made maple sugar from the abundant maple trees. In early part of 1832, they moved again to the Home District township of Tosoronto, near Toronto, and here he met Agnes Hood, daughter of James Hood and Margaret Bislen. She was born in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland on the 5^th of March 1811. They were married on the 6^th of April, 1832 and their first child, Margaret Hill, was born in the township of Tosoronto in 1833 but died in infancy. Their second child, Margaret Ann, was born May 1^st, 1834 in Dalhousie, Canada. After returning to Tosoronto, they had their remaining children: Alexander Hood Hill was born 18^th of January 1836; James Hood Hill was born December 9^th, 1837; William Hood Hill and Elizabeth Hood Hill were born February 22^nd, 1840; and Moroni Hood Hill was born May 9^th, 1842.

In 1840, Parley P. Pratt, a missionary representing the Latter-day Saints, came and the whole family became interested in this faith. On the 1^st or 12^th of April in 1840 all of these families (thirty) went down into the flowing waters and were submerged therein. They were baptized and confirmed the same day. A branch of this church, called the Essex Branch, consisting of thirty members, was established and Alexander Hill, Jr. was appointed and ordained its presiding priest and John K. Richards, a brother-in-law, was elected clerk of the branch.

In the spring of the year 1841, two of Alexander Hill, Jr.'s brothers, Archibald N. and John and other members of the Essex Branch of the church, crossed over into the United States and wended their way toward the village of Nauvoo, Illinois where they remained for some time for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the people, exploring the country. The members of the Essex Branch was delighted and became more enthused with there religion and started making plans to become American citizens and to enjoy their liberty under the stars and stripes instead of remaining in British-controlled Canada. Alexander Hill, Jr. spent considerable time in disposing of his home and farm.

In September of 1842, Alexander Hill, Jr. and family and other relatives of the Hill family started for the United States, and on the 30^th of September 1842, arrived at Nauvoo, Illinois. Winter was at hand and the time for building homes was limited; hence their housing capacities were neither comfortable nor commodious. Sandy, as was his (Alexander) nickname, occupied part of his time during the winter by hauling bricks for the Nauvoo House, stones for the Nauvoo Temple, timbers and firewood from the islands of the Mississippi river and surrounding country. This is what he did to occupy his time until 1846. Agnes Hood Hill, their eighth child, was born on the 16^th of January, 1845. Alexander Hill, Jr. was an associate and fellow laborer with the Prophet Joseph Smith and Patriarch Hyrum Smith and was at Nauvoo when they were martyred.

In the winter and spring of 1846, the first presidency of the church and many others were obliged to make a hasty retreat across the Mississippi River into Iowa, leaving their homes to be enjoyed by enemies and strangers. Sandy took his teams and aided a number of the helpless families who were retreating from Nauvoo, hauling them as far as Garden Grove, Iowa where the Saints were making a refuge station for themselves and those who followed. Sandy then returned for his own family and moved them to Quincy, Illinois where they lived for three years. In 1847, Nephi Hood Hill was born and died in 1848 and was buried there.

About the middle of June 1849, Alexander Hill, Jr. and family joined the Allen Taylor Company at Council Bluffs, under the command of Captain Allred, destined for Utah Territory. Too numerous to mention were the hardships endured and the sacrifices made by these brave pioneers in crossing the plains, fording and swimming the rivers and streams of water, wallowing and dragging through the miseries and mud holes of the prairies and plains to seek a haven of rest, where they could be free from religious persecution. They built cabins in the forests, dug huts, pitched their tents in the deserts, made their homes in caves and became neighbors and friends with the Indians..While enroute to Utah, Isabella Hood Hill was born at Bluff Ruins, Wyoming, on August 18^th, 1849.

On October 15^th 1849, the company arrived in Great Salt Lake City. Sandy and his family moved to Mill Creek and located on thirty acres of public domain near Big Cottonwood Creek, constructed a crude home and made a dug-out in the side of a hill, near where the stream of water crosses State Street. In the winter of 1849-1850 the first religious services ever held in the district of country were held in this house. This crude building served as a dwelling for Sandy and his family of nine children for two years. In Mill Creek another son was born, Hyrum Hood Hill June 25^th, 1857. In the summer of 1859, a public house was built of adobies which served as a chapel and a school house. The Hill children went to school in the winter and worked with their father on the farm the rest of the year. Joseph Robert was born February 8^th, 1851.

At General Annual Conference of the Church held in Salt Lake City, April 6^th, 1851, Rueben Miller was elected and ordained the bishop of Mill Creek ecclisiastical ward. He chose as counselors, James Rawlins and ____ Hotchkinsson. Brother Hotchkinsson went to California and Sandy was first counselor until 1856 when he was called as a missionary to serve among the Indians. While he was on his mission, the town of Fort Lemhi was established. During his stay with the Indians, they stripped him of his clothes, turned him loose, stark-naked, for all intents of making him a typical Indian. He found some clothes and returned to live with them. When he returned to Mill Creek for a load of provisions and supplies, Bishop Miller concluded he needed Sandy's services at home so they sent James Hood Hill back to the Indians.

In 1859, Sandy went to Mendon and located a forty-acre farm which he rented out and only came occasionally to superintend it's affairs.

March 12^th, 1885, with Archibald N. Hill, Sandy left for Canada as a missionary to labor among and visit his distant relatives and friends in and about Toronto. He spent all year in Canada and did not return to Mill Creek until late in the spring of 1886.

Agnes Hood Hill died at Mill Creek, February 16^th, 1872 and was buried in the Salt Lake City cemetery. Alexander Hill, Jr. died February 8^th, 1889. His earthly remains are intered in the Salt Lake City cemetery, by the side of his wife. To do honor to his name, after the time of his death, his family and the people of Mill Creek Ward contributed liberally of their means for the erection of a large, beautiful monument which stands as an ensign to mark the resting place of this good man and the burial spot of his family.

Author Unknown

Alexander Jr. and Agnes Hood Hill

Alexander Hill, Jr., son of Alexander Hill and Elizabeth Currie (Curry) Hill, was born March 1^st, 1811, at Abbey Parish, Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland, where he lived during the first ten years of his life. His father, Alexander Hill, who had been discharged from the Royal Navy in 1802, and served on merchant ships for a few more years had settled in Johnstone on the Black Cart Water, where his parents, Daniel and Mary Campbell Hill still lived. He had married Elizabeth Currie (Curry) on May 30^th, 1806. At this time, the town was being developed as a major manufacturer of cotton yarn, and many mills offering employment were opening up. Alexander Hill, Jr., their third child, was born there, one of seven children.

The family prospered for a time, but after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 came a severe economic depression. With the aid of the government many of the destitute workers immigrated to Upper Canada, principally to Lanark County, Ontario. Among these 2,900 destitute Scots were Alexander and Elizabeth and their six children who left for Canada in April 1821 aboard the ship Earl of Buckinghamshire. At this time, Alexander, Jr. was ten years old. Once in Quebec, the emigrants went up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal on the steamboat Malsham and by smaller flat-bottom boats another one-hundred twenty miles to Prescott. The remaining journey of seventy-four miles overland to Lanark was made by wagons over muddy and swampy roads and on foot, carrying some of their possessions on their backs.

Another settler aboard the ship George Canning that sailed from Glasgow to Quebec the same month as the Hills describes interesting aspects of his journey that are typical of what most of these early Scotch immigrants to Canada experienced:

The Hill family made the journey to the Township of Lanark in Bathurst District in the Ottawa Valley and were settled on their heavily forested land, Lot 25 East in Concession I of Lanark Township, by July 26^th, 1821. The nearest community was Perth, founded in 1816, which became the capital of the district in 1823. Here they struggled to make a living for twelve years. Because of the poor soil and their inability to make a living, they were allowed to abandon their land and move to a better farming area in Tosorontio and Essa townships in the Home District, later changed to the Simcoe District northwest of Toronto. Tosorontio is a Huron word meaning "beautiful mountain," and should not be confused with Toronto. Essa is the name of an Indian chief's daughter. This area became Simcoe County in 1850. Within a few years, the Hill brothers and the husbands of their married sisters settled on lands of their own. Alexander, Jr. purchased one-hundred acres, the east half of Lot 10, Concession VII of Tosorontio on 24 June 1837. The Tosorontio and Essa Township line was the east border of his property. Members of the Hill families settled on both sides of the line, as did some of the families they married into.

At Tosorontio Alexander married Agnes Hood. The two families probably knew each other in the sparsely settled Bathurst District, since Dalhousie and Lanark townships were side by side and the west boundary of the Hill property was the east Dalhousie Township boundary. A large number of settlers referred to as the Dalhousie Settlers moved to the Home District, shortly after renamed Simcoe District, about the same time as the Hills and others from Lanark, settling largely in Essa, Innisfil, and Tosorontio townships.

Alexander probably knew Agnes from Lanark and married her shortly after reaching Tosorontio. Her parents, James Hood and Margaret Bisland and eight children came with other family members and neighbors to the Bathurst District as Lanark Settlers in 1820 aboard the ship Prompt, some of the earliest settlers in the district. Agnes was nine years old.

Her father James Hood was born in Kelso, Roxburghshire, Scotland, 14 April 1775, the son of William Robert and Hannah Clarke (Clark) Hood. Kelso was developed after 1128 when an abbey was constructed on the River Tweed in the Border District of Scotland. Sir Walter Scott attended the grammar school there and called the town, "The most beautiful if not the most romantic village in Scotland." William was a weaver, possibly one of the sixty in Kelso listed in Statistical Accounts of Scotland 1791-1799, Volume 10, page 586, who in 1792 collectively "made about 20,000 yards of flannel; and from 9 to 10,000 yards of different kinds of linen."

Sometime after 1779 William moved his family to Bridgeton, Barony Parish, Lanarkshire, a village founded in 1705 and now part of the east end of Glasgow. A recent internet history describes the weaving industry that may have been the impetus for William Hood moving his family there and may also describe the situation of Alexander Hill, also a weaver in nearby Renfrewshire:

James Hood married Elizabeth Jones in May 1798 in Bridgeton and had five children with her, two of whom died before her death in 1803. Five years later, he married Margaret Jane Bisland, also in Bridgeton, by whom he had ten children, the second oldest, Agnes, born in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland, on 4 March 1811. Her father was probably a weaver like his father and not experienced in farming.

To improve their living conditions during the severe depression, especially among weavers, James joined the Lesmahago Society consisting of thirty-three families of three-hundred members that successfully petitioned for land grants in Upper Canada, now Ontario.

The group sailed from Scotland on 4 July 1820 and arrived at Perth, Ontario, on 15 September. The Hoods and their party remained there until the 30^th when they were taken by wagon to the site of Lanark Village. There they found tacked to a tree beside a newly cut road through the forest, a placard that said "This is Lanark." They were dropped off there with their baggage and hired Lt. Fraser to guide them to Dalhousie Township where they drew from a hat a slip of paper with a lot number on it. Without wagons, these ettlers had to carry their provisions on their backs or on their heads.

The Hood family settled near what is today Watson Corners. And, like the Hills, struggled to make a living on the poor farm land for over ten years, before getting government permission to move south and west to the Simcoe area, where all of the family except Agnes and Isabella, remained and where their descendants numbering in the hundreds live today. Their Dalhousie location was later called Hoods Corners. Her half brother, William, the only male child of James Hood to survive, remained in Dalhousie, Lanark County, when the other Hoods left for Simcoe. He was able to supplement his farm income as a teacher at the school at Hoods Corners, and the school was named after him. He died there in 1874, and he and his wife Martha Park are buried at St. Andrews Cemetery at Watson Corners just across the border in Lanark Township, near where the Hills had settled. The school still stands and is used as a residence for summer tourists to the area.

The year 1840 proved to be a momentous one for Alexander and Agnes and the rest of the Hill families. While living in Tosorontio and Essa Townships of Simcoe County, the Hill families were introduced to the restored gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On April 26^th, 1836, Parley P. Pratt, who had been especially called through revelation to take the Everlasting Gospel to the people of Toronto, arrived in the city, where he became acquainted with a society consisting of dissenters from the Methodist Church, known as the John Taylor Society. John Brice Hill, Alexander's cousin, stated in 1927 that; "the whole Hill family were members of the John Taylor Society of Toronto, and were all converted to the faith through the teachings of Parley P. Pratt." However, Toronto was a considerable distance from Tosorontio (over sixty miles), so this connection is questionable. Two other sources provide a more likely scenario. Andrew Hunter's, The History of Simcoe County, 1909, pp. 42-43 says:

We also learn from the minutes of the Essa and Tosorontio Branch of the Church that many of the family were baptized on April 1^st, 1840, by Elder Samuel Lake, including Alexander, Jr. and his wife Agnes. The father, Alexander Hill, Sr., his wife Elizabeth Currie, and their eldest son Daniel were not baptized until January 8^th, 1841, by Elder James Standing. The minutes also show that Alexander Hill, Jr. was ordained a presiding priest of the branch and John Kenny Richards, his brother-in-law, was unanimously chosen as clerk. The members of this small branch decided to join the Saints in Nauvoo, and in the spring of 1841 two of Alexander's brothers, John and Archibald Newell, along with five other members of the branch went to Nauvoo to investigate the prospects. They returned with a favorable report, and the families began in earnest to sell their farms, purchase needed wagons, supplies, equipment, etc., in preparation for the journey. Alexander, Jr. was able to sell his one-hundred acres on March 30^th, 1842. The Hill families with other branch families, seventeen families in all, left for Nauvoo, Illinois, to join the Saints in August 1842, arriving there on September 30^th, 1842.

This move must have been difficult for Agnes and her sister Isabella, who had married Agnes' brother-in-law Archibal Newell Hill. They were leaving their parents and eight surviving siblings and their families behind, never to see them again. Her other sisters and her parents all lived out their lives in Simcoe County and are buried in cemeteries in Essa, Nottawasaga, and Innisfil townships, where most had large, multi-generational families. Their mother died there in 1856 and their father in 1859; both are buried in the Creemore Union Cemetery, Nottawasaga Township, Simcoe County.

Agnes' oldest sister, Jean, married James Jack and moved to Bruce County where she and her husband are buried in the Tiverton Cemetery. None of her family in Canada joined the Church, although Agnes may have kept in touch with them through letters. But firm in her new faith, despite her feeling of loss, she made the sacrifice and went with her husband's family to Nauvoo.

Alexander, Jr. and Agnes had thirteen children. Their first child, Margaret, was born 13 January 1833 in Tosorontio and died 18 April 1833. Their second child, Margaret Ann, was born at Dalhousie on 1 May 1834. Why they had returned to Bathurst District is unknown, although he did not purchase land in Tosorontio until June 24^th, 1837. Agnes gave birth to five more children at Tosorontio over the next eight years: Alexander Hood Hill, born 18 January 1836; James Hood Hill, born 9 Decenber 1837; William Hood Hill and Elizabeth Hood Hill (twins), born 22 February 1840, and Moroni Hood Hill, born 19 May 1842.

At Nauvoo with winter approaching, the time for building houses was limited; hence their housing was neither very comfortable nor commodious. Alexander, Jr., Sandy, as his family called him, along with other family members, spent part of his time during the winter in hauling bricks for the Nauvoo House, stones for the Nauvoo Temple, and timber and firewood from the islands of the Mississippi and the surrounding country. He continued spending most of his time working on these two buildings during the following years, till the spring of 1846. During the meantime Agnes gave birth to their eighth child, Agnes Hood Hill, on January 16^th, 1845.

Alexander Hill, Jr. was at Nauvoo when the Prophet Joseph Smith and Patriarch Hyrum Smith were martyred at Carthage. In the winter and spring of 1846, most of the Church leaders and many others of the Latter-day Saints were forced to make a hasty retreat across the Mississippi River into Iowa, leaving their homes and comfortable firesides to be enjoyed by their enemies and strangers. Alexander took his team and aided a number of the helpless families who were retreating from Nauvoo, hauling them as far as Garden Grove, Iowa, where the Saints were making a refuge station for themselves and those who might follow.

He then returned for his own family and moved them to Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, where they resided for three years. In 1847 a ninth child, Nephi Hood Hill wasborn to Agnes at Quincy, where he died in 1848. On May 14^th, 1849, they gathered up their personal belongings and with their ox-teams started westward through the forests, wooded swamps and mires of Iowa Territory, toward the home of the Pottawattamie Indians. They halted at Honey Creek, Pottawattamie County, on the western border of Iowa, to visit Alexander's parents, his brother John and his sisters Agnes and Elizabeth, who were living there. Alexander and Agnes and their children then moved on to Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), Iowa, to prepare for their departure to the Salt Lake Valley.

On 6 July 1849, Alexander Hill, Jr. and family, including seven year old Hannah, the daughter of Archibald Newell Hill, left for Zion in the Allen Taylor Company from Kanesville, in Captain Allred's fifty. They endured rain, fording rivers, heat, alkali flats, even snow, but also an occasional treat of fresh meat from antelope and buffalo shot by members of the company. One member of the company even mentioned that the numerous prairie dogs they saw were good to eat. Hannah in later years recalled her feelings: I was very excited and thought we were going on a pleasure trip, but found it was a very long, hard one before we got to the end of our journey. I traveled bare-footed and bare-headed; sometimes we would travel two or three days without water. Their most dangerous trials came from spooked cattle corralled inside their circled wagons. Numerous times these episodes resulted in injuries to people and animals, destroyed and damaged wagons and caused the death of a Sister Hawks when the spooked cattle broke through the encircled wagons trying to escape. Wolves also were a problem at times (ten were killed in one evening) and rattlesnakes. The journey must have been particularly difficult for Agnes, who was pregnant with her tenth child. She gave birth to Isabella Hood Hill at Bluff Ruins, Nebraska Territory, near today's Broadwater, Nebraska, on August 18^th, 1849.

The Allen Taylor Company, which had broken into small groups as they neared the Salt Lake Valley arrived at the little town of Great Salt Lake City between October 10^th and the 20^th, 1849. The family stayed for a couple of weeks at Orson Spencer's home in the city, and then went to Mill Creek to live. Alexander located on thirty acres of public domain near Big Cottonwood Creek, constructed a crude house and made a dugout in the side of a hill, near where this stream of water crosses State Street. In the winter of 1849-1850, the first religious services ever held in this part of the area were held in this house. This crude building served as a dwelling for Alexander Jr., his wife and nine children for two years. In the summer of 1859, a public house was built of adobes in this neighborhood, which served as a chapel for religious services as well as for the schoolhouse. His children went to school there during the winter and worked on the farm with their father the remainder of the year. Joseph Robert, another son, was born February 8^th, 1851, in Mill Creek.

In 1851 Alexander Jr. was called as the second counselor in the Mill Creek Ward bishopric, and became first counselor in 1852 or 1853 and served until March 30^th, 1884, when his son-in-law, James C. Hamilton, was called as bishop. Another daughter, Jane Mary was born January 18, 1855.

In May 1855, Brigham Young called twenty-seven Mormon missionaries to establish a mission among Idaho's indigenous peoples, And there teach the Indians the principles of civilization. Heading north in May, the missionaries had no specific destination but were to locate, "Anywhere that the tribes would receive them." In the middle of June 1855 after a journey of twenty-two days, they arrived at an area south of what is now Salmon, Idaho, where the Shoshone, Bannock and Nez Perce tribes gathered during the summer to fish and trade among themselves. Later called the Lemhi Shosone, they were the people of Sacajawea. The Bannock Chief, Shoo-Woo-Koo, the Big Rogue, welcomed the mission and gave the missionaries land for farming, fishing and hunting privileges. They were not, however, to catch fish, kill game, or cut timber, if it was to be taken from the valley. He hoped that this new settlement would enable the Indians to obtain desirable manufactured goods as trade for their furs, meat, and dried salmon.

The missionaries selected a site and built a fort and a number of cabins. They called it Fort Limhi after King Limhi in the Book of Mormon whose journey from Lamanite captivity in the Land of Nephi to freedom under King Mosiah in Zarahemla, supposedly took twenty-two days. Over time the spelling became Lemhi and the valley and river now bear that name. While building the fort they also took time to prepare eight acres of ground for planting corn, turnips, peas, beans and potatoes. Even so, the grasshoppers and short growing season in the valley left the settlers without a sufficient harvest, and they had to bring in food for the winter from Utah. But they learned to adapt, and more colonists joined them in 1857.

According to the Hill Family History, in the spring of 1856, Alexander was called to this mission, but he was most likely one of the original twenty-seven men sent in 1855, since additional colonists didn't arrive until 1857 when Alexander was already back in Mill Creek. The history also states:

After delivering the supplies, James remained at Ft. Limhi that winter and the next summer. He spent the next twenty-five years serving the Indians, primarily in Box Elder County, Utah, from his home in Mendon. He was never released from his missionary labors among the Indians, to which he had been called by Brigham Young in May 1873. Seeing the growth of the Mormon community as a threat to their traditional foraging and fishing lands, the Indians became upset. Tensions between the Indians and missionaries increased, especially after the Mormons sent eight wagons of dried salmon back to Utah, ignoring their agreement not to do so. Also, as a result of a war between the Nez Perce on one side and the Bannock and Shoshone Indians on the other, in which the missionaries tried to serve as peacemakers, tensions between the Indians and the missionaries came to a head. On February 25^th, 1858, Bannock and Shoshone Indians raided Fort Limhi, drove off most of the colony's cattle and horses, killed two settlers and wounded five others. These losses and the possibility of further attacks convinced the settlers that the colony could not survive. A militia force from Utah arrived in response to messengers sent south shortly after the raid to conduct the missionaries safely home. The party suffered one more casualty during the withdrawal.

Though Alexander's mission was short and the mission was later abandoned, they had some missionary success, especially after the Shoshone chief, Snag, became a convert to Mormonism and his acceptance of Mormon doctrine sparked as many as one-hundred baptisms among the Lemhi people. However, these converts were abandoned when the missionaries returned to Utah.

On June 25^th, 1857, the last of Alexander and Agnes' thirteen children was born in Mill Creek and named Hyrum John Hood Hill, my grandfather. That spring, Alexander planted some flax seed on his farm at Mill Creek, and harvested this crop, which must have been among the first crops of flax ever raised in Utah. Knowing little about how to turn this plant material into fabric, he hired Peter Larsen, a young Dane who had worked with flax in his native Denmark and knew something about curing its fiber and manufacturing it into linen. This venture was never successful, but the young man went with Alexander's son James and Isaac Sorensen in the spring of 1859 and helped to settle Mendon, Cache County, Utah. Alexander, Jr. also went there that spring and located a forty acre farm, which he afterwards rented, coming to Mendon only occasionally to see to its affairs. He maintained his permanent residence in Mill Creek.

Alexander Jr., committed to living his religion faithfully, entered into polygamy. Most family records I have seen show that he was sealed to four additional wives: Harriet Bradshaw, 27 December 1852 (later divorced); Mary Meiklejohn, 28 January 1857; Pauline Margaret Hansen, 16 January 1864, and Elizabeth Burnett, 12 August 1872. The International Genealogical Index shows that he was also sealed to Mine Rasmussen and Mary Hashwood on 5 July 1872 in the Endowment House. I know nothing about his living arrangements with his plural wives except what is revealed in the 1880 Census.

Agnes Hood Hill, his first wife, died of lung fever at Mill Creek February 1^st, 1872, and was buried in the Salt Lake City cemetery. In 1880 the U.S. Census shows Alexander's household to include two of his plural wives, Pauline Margaret Hansen and Elizabeth Burnett, along with two of his sons from Agnes Hood: Joseph H. Hill, age 28, whose occupation was farmer, the same as his father, and Hyrum H. Hill, age 23, listed as a rancher. Also living there was another son, Alvin Hill, age 25, listed as a rancher. None of the family records show an Alvin Hill as a son of Alexander and Agnes, so he could have been the son of Harriet Bradshaw whom Alexander married in 1852 and later divorced. Or the name or relationship could have been confused by the census taker. Also living with him were two stepchildren, Alice M. Donegan, age seventeen and John E. Donegan, age eleven, the children of Elizabeth Burnett Hill from a previous marriage to Dennis Augustine Donegan. Elizabeth and these two children were born in England, and Pauline Margaret was born in Denmark.

On March 12^th, 1885, Alexander and his brother Archibald Newell Hill left for Canada as missionaries to labor among and visit with his distant relatives and friends in and about Toronto and Simcoe County where the Essa and Tosorontio Branch had been established and he set apart as its Presiding Priest over forty years earlier. He spent all of the year there, undoubtedly visiting his wife's relatives in the Simcoe County area, but with no success in converting any to the restored gospel. He returned to Mill Creek in the late spring of 1886. Even though he was now seventy-two years of age, travel to the east and Canada had been made much easier and faster with the development and improvement of the railroads. For instance, the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed across Canada to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1886 and both this and the Canadian National Railway served the Simcoe area.

I have no record of how successful this mission was, but it certainly shows, along with his long tenure in the bishopric of the Mill Creek Ward, his mission to the Indians, and his several plural marriages, that he was a faithful and dedicated member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His wife, Agnes Hood, too was a faithful member of the church. She accepted the principle of plural marriage and supported her husband faithfully for forty years through all the difficulties and trials of pioneering in both Canada and the United States, giving birth to thirteen children and rearing eleven of them to maturity.

Three years after his mission, Alexander Hill, Jr. died in Mill Creek on February 8^th, 1889, three weeks short of his 79^th birthday. He was buried by the side of Agnes in the Salt Lake City cemetery. To honor his name, his family and the people of Mill Creek Ward contributed liberally for the erection of a large, beautiful monument to mark the burial spot.

Blaine Hill Hall

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