Fellow Hill Researchers: I've been meaning to do this for some time but am just now getting around to doing it. I am transcribing a letter from my great grandfather Hugh Lawson White Hill, b. 1840 Warren Co TN, to B.T. Mason in Warren Co TN. The letter gives a wonderful view of agricultural prices, the economy, family relationships, further travels by offspring, etc., and religion. I hope you enjoy it. There are also a number of Missouri and TN surnames here. By way of background: Hugh Lawson White Hill, b. 1840 was illegitimate, possibly/probably the son of a Congressman of the same name, b. 1810 Warren Co TN. Our HLW Hill ran away from home at age 13 or so, when his probably adoptive stepfather in McMinneville died, and his probably adoptive, but maybe real mother Mary Miller remarried. He arrived, so the family legend goes, penniless in Lawrence Co Missouri and was given a job by Wm MCCanse in his store as a clerk and the rest is history. Wm McCanse ("Uncle Billy" as he was known) was a prosperous merchant for a very small town of course. To sort the names out in the letter here: In Warren Co TN he lived in the household of the Millers in 1850 census (he is shown as H.L.W.Hill) and Masons lived close by. He regarded the other Miller children (several mentioned below) as his half siblings and went back to Warren Co TN. ca 1870 and brought several of them to Missouri. Those of us wanting to find out who his parents are find only further ambiguity in the letter ("mother to all intense") Hugh Lawson White Hill in 1863 married Sarah Elizabeth Tennessee (aka "Tennie) Gay, d/o William Washington Gay, b. Davidson Co TN 1818, and Mary Bowen Whaley, b. Dekalb Co TN, 1827. Children of Sarah Gay and Hugh Hill are: 1. Mary Frances5 Hill, born June 16, 1865 in Lawrence County MO; died August 03, 1873. 2. William Camel Hill, born August 28, 1867 in Lawrence County MO. He married Myrtle RHYDY. 3. Nannie Mattie Hill, born December 23, 1869 in Lawrence County MO. She married Albert PRATER Abt. 1888. 4. Sarah Emma Hill, born March 08, 1872 in Lawrence County MO; died August 08, 1873. 5. Thomas Benjamin Leonadulus (Lon) Hill, born July 20, 1874 in Lawrence County MO. He married Oren Ella FORTNER November 11, 1895 in Mt Vernon MO. (I have much more on this family. I descend on my mother's side from cousins of Oren Ella Fortner. Their roots were in Greene Co TN. Her grandfather migrated to Lawrence Co in 1850s. His sister, my ancestor's, descendants didn't come until 30 years later. Time had not broken any bonds. In the 1930s several of these families' descendants moved from Missouri to the Los Angeles Basin or San Joaquin Valley. My parents did not move there until 1954. Again, family reunions, holidays, etc. all of us together..with a few families that had intermarried of course). 6. Lena Bowen Hill, born January 04, 1877 in Lawrence County MO. She married Timothy BAKER, son of Zachriah Baker and Samantha J 7. Margueritta Louise Hill, born January 18, 1879 in Lawrence County MO. . She married William Loren BAUGH November 08, 1900 in Lawrence County MO, son of William Edward/Eggleston Baugh and Letsey SHELTON. He was the son of Archibald Bolling Baugh and Caroline WASH. Letsey was the daughter of second cousins Moses Hurt Shelton and Nancy Clark Shelton. This is my line through Margueritte and Loren Baugh's son Herbert Hill Baugh who married Marjorie Lee Sexton, d/o Charles Ceburn Sexton (Greene Co TN) and Lucy Bell Marsh (her TN roots are Bedford Co) 8. Sada Elizabeth Hill, born Abt. 1882 in Lawrence County MO; died January 23, 1890. 9. Richard Henry Hill, born July 27, 1883 in Lawrence County MO. He married Geneva WOODARD. 10. Hugh White Hill, born February 04, 1886 in Lawrence County MO; died March 26, 1886 . 11. Lawson Edgar Hill, born March 30, 1887 in Lawrence County MO. He married Mary HALTERMAN. 12. Archibald Pierce Hill, born September 28, 1889 in Lawrence County MO. He married Carrie HUDSPETH Here is the letter with all spelling in tact, and some bracketed inserts included in the Miller Press, Lawrence Co MO. It was reprinted in the Miller Press at some point none of the family can remember. I inserted a couple of extra paragraph breaks. Lawrenceburg, Lawrence County, Missouri May 2nd 1880 Mr. B.T. Mason Dear friend. I am glad to here from you once moore. I thought that you had forgotten all of us So i rote to give you ample time to answer. This leaves us all in usual good healt at present. Times is good in this Country at present and money plenty and the Best prospects for a wheat crop that I Eaver seen in Southwest Missouri. If nothing happends to the Growing crop of wheat it will make 25 or 30 bushel per achor. I have about 60 achors of wheat sowed. Wheat is worth $1.10, corn 25 cts, bacon 19 cts, hogs $??, grase beef cattle $2.75 to 3.00 per hundred lbs. horses 75.00 to 100 dollars. mules from 65.00 to 135.00 and some have sold as high as 150.00, cows and calve 25 dollars. Eaverthing bars [bears] a good price. They are now at work on a Rail Road that runs 5 miles north of me [evidently the present Frisco line through Everton and on west]. It is at present ten miles from my house to a depo. We have as fine a contary as i eaver saw taken eaverthin in consideration. Water good health good range good, land good, timber noot so good as you have got [in TN] but a nuff to make out with. That boy that i named after you is all rite [here he spoke of Thomas Benjamin Leonadulus (Lon) Hill]. he went to school last faul and lurnt to read a little. He thinks a great deal of that picture you sent him and wants to no when Unkle Ben is comeing to see us. He ses to tell you that he gose to Sunday School eaver Sunday. A.O. Miller and famley is all well and doing tolible well. W.A. Miller is selling goods at Lawrenceburg and by the way making money. W.C. Miller is in Yoming Territory, several hundred miles west of MO. We can't tell from his riteting wheather he is doing any good or not. James Miller is in Douglass Co. Texas and is marid and is a Free Will Baptist preacher of the gospel. Don't kno what or how he is getting along. Martha [known as Mattie' lives close by me and is in varry por helth. Hur and Mr. Edington [Hezzie] have plenty of eaverything about them. We have bilt a new Methodist church house 1 ¼ miles north of me sence i rote to you last [Here he speaks of the brick structure replaced the Shiloh Church. The present one he mentions in 1910. The old building stood a distance east of the present location about the southwest corner of the old east portion of the cemetery]. Myself and wife both belong to the M.E. Church South. The Lord give me a hundred dollars and I givet back to the Lord to bild a house for Gods people to worship him and when you, if living, here that Hill is lade under the sod say that he has allwayes tried to live rite in the site of my God. And when I put of this tabernickle of clay i expect to meet friends and relatives around the thron of God. And among others that sister of yours Winney Miller and my mother. Yes a mother to al intense and purposes as to the cear of the infant child is concerned. And i have no doubt in my mind that the seed that she sowed in my youthful hart reposed and brought fourth its fruit in due time. Wood to God the world was full of such wimen to day-What a Glorius Camp meeting we wood have. I wish I could talk to you a week for I have to prase God. Good by rite and I will rite soon and rite moore. H.W.L. Hill to B.T. Mason. ======================= A note to the Miller Press article: Mr. Hills son, Richard, states that his father struck out from Tennessee at the age of 13 and alone because his stepfather "bonded him out" to work. (He recalls his father saying he arrived at the Mississippi River without a coat and only 50 cents in his pocket.) His descendants have debated exactly how old he was when he left (13,14 and 15), but there is a record of the remarriage in late 1852 in Warren Co TN. There are also theories on where he got the money to buy his farm: loan from McCanse, or from the Gays, or from his possible father Hugh Lawson White Hill in Warren Co TN (who became a Congressman....WAS a state assemblyman when our HLW Hill was born.) I hope you all enjoyed this. Sorry to go on for so long. I have much more on the descendants of HLW Hill and on Sarah E.T. Gay's ancestors, which include 160 years on the Eastern Shore of Maryland/VA, from 1600s - 1804 (Bowen, Whaley, Bratten, Truitt, Fleming, Gavan, Whittington, Fassitt, Hammond, Powell, Patey, Jenkins, Kendall, Lamberton, Smith, Clarke, Watson, Timmons). Janet (Baugh) Hunter