"The Sabbath Recorder", Vol 111, no 26, p 817, Dec. 28, 1931. Rev. George W. Hills, the eldest son of Oscar and Annie Coon Hills, was born near Milton, Wis., on June 10, 1851, and died of double pneumonia at his home in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sabbath morning December 5, 1931, at the age of eighty years and six months. Shortly after the close of the Civil War his parents, with their three children, George Fannie and Stephen, moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota, were they settled in Ashland Township, near Dodge Center. He received his early education in the public schools of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and at Groveland Academy in Wasioja, Minn. In 1872 he was married to Miss Martha M. Jones, who died in 1895. In July 1896, he married Miss Fannie Adelle Wells. To this union was born his only child, a daughter, Fannie Marie. His wife died in 1904. Later he was married to Miss Serena Dodds, who survives him. He became a Christian when he was seventeen years old, and united with the Dodge Center Seventh Day Baptist Church. In his early twenties he became a deacon in this church, being at that time the youngest deacon in the denomination. He was also for some time superintendent of the Sabbath school. For the first ten years of his married life he was a farmer in Minnesota, working at the same time as a salesman and expert mechanic for the Plano Harvester Company. This kind of work had such a great appeal for him that he turned a deaf ear to the call to the ministry which the Lord was pressing upon him all these years. But at the age of thirty, he surrendered himself fully to the Lord, sold his farm and went to Alfred College to prepare himself for his life work. He did eight years of college work in five years, and was graduated three times-- in the classes of 88, 89, and 90. His Bachelor of Divinity degree was granted in 1889. He worked during vacations and week-ends to pay his expenses through college, and assisted in the mathematics department as teacher, at the same time doing high grade school work. "Elder" Hills was ordained, June 29, 1890, by a council called by the First Seventh Day Baptist Church of Alfred, N. Y., "in accord with the expressed wish of the West Milton (Wis.) Church..." H. P. Burdick was the "chairman" of the council and J. T. Davis, secretary. Dr. T. R. Williams preached the ordination sermon from the text of 1 Timothy 4: 16. His nearly fifty years of service to the denomination have been earnest and fruitful. As he neared the completion of his seminary course he received a call to the pastorate of the Milton Junction, Wisconsin ("West Milton") Church, which congregation he served for three years, leaving it to enter the employ of the Missionary Society as general evangelist on the southern field. Locating in Attalla, Ala. he did evangelistic work in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee for three years. His duties carried him often into pioneer territory. At least once his very life was in danger because of antagonism to his stand on the temperance question. While in this field he had charge of the tract depository at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895. After three years of very strenuous work in the southern field, his health broke and he was forced to return north. Rev. James N. Belton, who succeeded him, was a convert to the Sabbath under his preaching. Soon after the death of his first wife, he was sent into South Dakota on an evangelistic tour. On this trip he organized a Sabbath school at Rock House Prairie in Wisconsin, in 1896. His next pastorate was at Nortonville, Kansas, which church he served for thirteen years, spending several summers with a quartet in evangelistic work in that section. Next he went to the Salem W. Va., Church, leaving there four years later in December, 1912, to accept a call to the Los Angeles, Calif., pastorate. He has served this church for the past nineteen years. Up to four years ago he also acted as corresponding secretary and missionary pastor for the Pacific Coast Association of Seventh Day Baptists. He is survived by his wife, Serena; his daughter, Marie Hills Davis; and his two granddaughters, Marie Adelaide and Winifred Adell Davis; and by several nephews and nieces, only one of whom lives in California, Albino Davis of Riverside. He preached his last sermon two weeks before his death, having missed up to that time, in his nineteen years as pastor, just two services because of sickness. Almost his last pastoral duty was the baptizing of his two granddaughters, Adelaide and Winifred - a fitting rounding out of a full life of service for the Lord. At the time of his death he was the oldest living pastor in active service. One could not help but think how appropriate were Paul's words in the Sabbath school lesson on the Sabbath of his death in 2 Timothy 4: 7, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith; Henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day." And how fitting, too, that this veteran soldier of the Lord should receive his release from active duty and enter into his rest on the day of rest which he loved and honored so highly, and for which he was always such a staunch advocate. Funeral services were conducted for him from the Utter Funeral Parlors, on Monday, December 7, by Rev. Lester G. Osborn and Rev. Gerald D. Hargis, assisted by Elder E. S. Ballenger. He was laid to rest in the beautiful Forest Lawn Memorial Park, just as the sun was sinking in the west, and the closing whistles on the factories in the city below were telling of the close of another day's work. Truly "Daddy" Hills life was a long, fruitful "day's work" put in in the service of the Lord. L. G. O. They Came to Milton http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=jonsaunders