James Hood Hill ~ Index
I was born near Toronto, Canada, 9 December 1837. We moved from Canada to Nauvoo in 1842. We left Nauvoo for the West, just before the battle. Later in the summer we returned to Illinois locating at Quincy, where we remained until 15 May 1849 and we started on the trip across the plains. We reached Great Salt Lake City, October 1st, and located at Cottonwood for the winter.
In 1856 I was called on a mission to Oregon. I stayed there until the fall of 1857. I reached home on 20 December 1857. On 19 March 1858 I enlisted in the volunteer corps under Bishop Cunningham and was sent to Salmon River (Fort Lemhi.) Sylvester Collet was captain of our ten. We were gone ninety days.
On 1 May 1859 in company with Isaac Sorensen, Hans Peter Larsen and Peter Sorensen we started for Cache Valley. The four of us had one ox-team. Alexander Hill, Jr. (father) and my brother Alexander H. with a horse team joined us. We came in over the low divide. When we reached Mendon we found Rodger Luckham, Robert Sweeten and two girls, daughters of Luckham, also Alfred and Charles Atkinson, and Robert B. Hill and wife. Hill had a little cabin with a dirt roof, it stood about where the old church storehouse is now. The others were camped in wagons. Later we all moved to Wellsville on account of the Indians. The men would go to Mendon in the morning and work in the fields and return to Wellsville at night. This was continued until harvest time in August, when we all moved to Mendon and remained.
During May and June a number of other settlers joined us at Mendon. If I remember correctly the first to arrive was William Findley, Ralph Forster and Henry Hughes.The first two had their families with them. The next to arrive were James G. Willie and family, Ira Ames and Charles Shumway came but did not remain at that time. Albert M., George W. and Amenzo W. Baker came next. Albert was accompanied by his wife. John Richards came in June and worked with us putting in crops. His father, mother and the following children: Joseph, Hyrum, Elizabeth and Rachel came in the fall. Hans Jensen, came in the fall as a hired man to father.
We cut our wheat with cradles and threashed it with an old chaff-piler. I think the men who owned it was named Van Dike. Walters also ran one. As soon as harvest was over we set to work building cabins, we got the logs in the little canyons all along the mountain. We took our wheat to Brigham City to be made into flour. Findley, Forster and I, took the first grists over.
We came to Logan in those days by way of Wellsville. Later in 1862 father Ricks put in a ferry down on the lower Logan River and we went that way to Logan. In the fall of 1859 James G. Willie, Alex Hill, Ralph Forster, William Findley and Andrew P. Shumway, went over to Millville Canyon and got out logs for a meeting house. Andrew P. Shumway, was put in bishop in December or January. We held meetings in private cabins during the winter. Rodger Luckham would lead the singing. Ira Ames played a fiddle. We had not trouble with the Indians in 1859, but in the spring of 1860, we had an Indian scare and stood guard for some time. Some stock was run off by the Indians. George W. Thurston and Kelsey Bird built a (Grist) Mill between Wellsville and Mendon in 1860.
The dam was built in 1860. Thurston's little girl was stolen by the Indians in 1868. About the twentieth of June 1859, when the water was high, Isaac Sorensen and I, Alex Hill, Little Alex, Robert B. Hill and five girls came over to Logan. We came by way of Providence where we took dinner with Aaron DeWitt and Sister Dee, (Maryette Merril), Mrs. Dee, Mary Jane Jenkins, Betsy Woodward, and Margaret Hill came over to Logan with us. We had four horses on the wagon. We went up to the Dilley camp, near the mill. We visited for some time and looked around and then returned to Providence and home. There was not a house in Logan or Providence at that time and only about twelve small cabins in Wellsville.
Our first camp at Mendon was near where Whitney's house is now. We first lived in a fort capacity, along the street where I now live. Those who passed the first winter in Mendon were, James H. and Alexander Hill, Peter Larsen, Nicolai Sorensen, Abraham Sorensen, James G. Willie, Ralph Forster, William Findley, Albert M., George W. and Amenzo W. Baker, the Richards family, Andrew P. Shumway, Kelsey Bird and wife Sarah and Bradford Bird. I married Christena Sorensen, 7 January 1860, James G. Willie performing the ceremony.
The carrying off of the little Thurston girl by the Indians caused quite a stir in the valley for some time, every effort possible was made to find her, but with out avail. The mother was broken hearted and grieved constantly and never, while she lived here could she free herself from the dreadful uncertainty of the fate of her child. After a few years Mr. George W. Thurston sold out and left the country, no doubt thinking that amid new scenes his wife might be able to forget her sorrow. Some years after there was a story that an old squaw had confessed that she had carried the child away and that after a few months it fell sick and died, probably from exposure. For many months after the Thurston trouble, mothers all over the valley kept a pretty close watch of their children, especially if any Indians were known to be in the neighborhood.
James H. Hill ~ Personal History
James Hood Hill, the son of Alexander Hill, Jr. and Agnes Hood, was born 9 December 1837 near Toronto Canada. In September 1842 he left Canada, with his father's family, for the United States and arrived at Nauvoo, Illinois on 30 September 1842 where he lived for about four years. In company with his father's family, he left Nauvoo in the the spring of 1846 and moved to Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, where they lived until 14 May 1849. They then started for Council Bluffs, Iowa. They stopped for a few days at Honey Creek, Pottawattamie County, to visit with Alexander Hill and then went on to Council Bluffs, to join with the Allen Taylor Company. They arrived in Great Salt Lake City 15 October 1849. They went to Mill Creek and located on a farm on Cottonwood Creek.
In the spring of 1856, James' father was called on a mission to the Salmon River, Idaho and he returned to Mill Creek in the spring of 1856, for a load of supplies. He was then councilor to Bishop Miller of the Mill Creek ward. The bishop wanted him to remain at home, so it was decided that James should return to the Salmon River with the supplies in place of his father. He was then only a boy of nineteen years. He spent that winter, 1856 and the next summer at Fort Lemhi and returned to Mill Creek on 20 December 1857. He worked at home that winter.
President Buchanan called on President Brigham Young for men to go and fight the Bannocks Indians at Oregon. James enlisted on 11 March 1858. On his way he stopped at Fort Lemhi. A treaty of peace was signed between the United States and the Indians, so James went no further. He returned home the last of June, 1858 and found that his father's family had "Moved South" to Spanish Fork, Utah. He stayed at Mill Creek during the winter of 1858.
On the seventh of January, 1860 James was married to Christena Sorensen, at Mendon, Utah. At first they camped on Grave Yard Creek, then he located eighty acres of farm land on the west banks of Little Bear River, near the mouth of Logan River and devoted himself to farming. In the month of May he was called by the church to labor as a missionary among the Shoshone Indians at Franklin, Idaho. President Brigham Young had a steam sawmill at Soda Springs, Idaho, which was moved down to Maple Creek, a tributary of Cub Creek, northeast of Franklin and James superintended the Indians in building roads and getting out saw logs for the sawmill. During the winter of 1873 to 1874, he traveled from Mendon to this Indian camp every two weeks to preach to these Indians and baptized them in Cub Creek. In the spring of 1874 he was called by the church to help establish a mission headquarters for the Shoshone Indians on the west banks of Bear River, directly west of Dewyville, in Box Elder County, Utah. The Latter-day Saint church built a large frame meeting house for missionary purposes here. From thirty-five to forty Indians were placed in homesteads and James H. Hill labored here with George W. Hill, the Indian Agent. In one day, George W. Hill baptized three hundred and fifty Indians in the Bear River and James H. Hill and Alexander Hunsaker confirmed them. Conference was held and Apostle Lorenzo Snow, Eliza R. Snow, Judge Samuel Smith and Jonathan C. Wright, both of Brigham City and Abraham Hunsaker were in attendance.
James labored in this way with the Indians for twenty-five years. Later these Indians moved further north and established the town of Washakie in Box Elder County and James was not connected with them any further than to go there from time to time to preach to them. James was never released from his missionary labors among the Indians. President Young told him that whenever and wherever he met Indians, he should preach to and baptize them. He worked with and superintended many threshing machines in Cache Valley.
James and his wife, Christena resided at Mendon all their married life and the following children were born to them: Moroni Alexander Hill, born 22 March 1861 and married to Louisa Adams who died at Star Valley, Wyoming and was buried at Afton, Wyoming. James Isaac Hill, born 9 February 1863, Nephi Nicolas Hill, born 13 January 1865, married to Annabelle Yeaman, 30 November 1886. Malinda Cathrine, bone 26 August 1866, married to Peter Catron, 30 November 1886. Agnes, born 27 April 1868, married George Hardman, 18 July 1893. William, born 20 April 1874, married Mary Henderson. Lauzetta, born 17 September 1872, married Charles Poulsen. Elizabeth Jane, born 9 December 1879, married William O. Hardman, 20 December 1900.
Christena Sorensen Hill died 17 April 1896 and was buried in the Mendon cemetery. On the 20th of November 1911, James was married to Harriet Carr, who was born 29 September 1849 at Nottingham England. James H. Hill, died 31 May 1925, at the home of his daughter, Elizabeth H. Hardman and was buried in the Mendon cemetery.