Lord Richard Hill

The first of the Hills to come into Steuben County, New York, was Richard Lord Hill, my third great-grandfather. He was a remarkable man, larger than life, and a kind of giant.

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The first of the Hills to come into Steuben County, New York, was Richard Lord Hill, my third great-grandfather. I remember him primarily from the photograph of him that hung on the wall in my grandparent’s parlor—and my grandfather, Richard Lord Hill IV, owned the original tintype—taken during his time in the Civil War, where he was an officer and, as I would later find out, a hero. Above the photograph was Richard’s sword, engraved with a commendation by his men for that very act.

As with any ancestor, his is a life of fragments, and I piece together what I can of the obituaries published in two newspapers at the time: the Corning Leader and the Corning Journal, the prior of which is still in print.

Richard Lord Hill was born on a farm in Wayne, New York on Christmas Day, 1835. One version places his birthplace in Yates County, and another says Steuben County; which version is true depends on where the farm actually was located, since the county line runs apparently right through the township, and at any rate, the farm must have been outside of the town itself, which sits at the northern end of Waneta Lake, and a bit south of Keuka Lake. 

He was one of eight children, and one of the youngest. His parents, Harsey and Mary, had come from Putney County, the hamlet of Carmel, east of the Hudson River and not far from the Massachusetts border. They were almost certainly farmers, and presumably they’d moved west at some point, into the Finger Lakes, to escape what must have been a rapidly growing area north of New York City.

Richard came to Corning in 1854, at eighteen or nineteen years old. It was a journey of only thirty miles, but the city at the time must have seemed distant. Early in life, Richard was a machinist, though in what capacity I don’t know. Later he was, like me, a teacher. He taught in Knoxville—today it’s the north side of Corning—and, later, in Fulton, Oswego, and Baldwinsville—all further north in the Lake Ontario region. He even edited a newspaper in Fulton.

After volunteering for the Civil War, he eventually served as a first lieutenant and acting adjutant in Company E of the 24^th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Later he reenlisted in the 24^th Volunteer Cavalry, where he was an Acting Major, and nine months into his service he was wounded—“dangerously,” as one obituary put it—at the Battle of Cold Harbor, in Virginia, in June of 1864. He was honorably discharged in October of that year.

After the war, one obituary states, he was a “particularly prominent man,” working first for the firm Preston & Heerman’s of Corning (they manufactured steam engines and boilers and machinery for gristmills) and later as an insurance adjuster for Cole & Thompson until 1871 (“attaining a knowledge of insurance matters that won him a reputation as an exceptionally successful adjuster”).

In 1881, he relocated to New York City (by 1900 he was living on Park Avenue), working as a Fire Adjuster for the Hamburg-Breman Fire Insurance Company for some nineteen years. “He was an unusually capable insurance official,” writes the Corning Journal, “being a man of keen intelligence and thoroughly familiar with the laws regarding Fire Insurance.” 

He returned to Corning, “owing to advancing years and infirmities,” only two years before he died. He was confined to his house—at 34 West Third Street, not far from my grandparent’s house—for three months before finally succumbing to Bright’s Disease on a Friday afternoon, April 25, 1902. This information was written in the “Hill Family Bible.” Richard was sixty-eight years old—just a year older than my own father when he died of cancer in 2014 in his own home, less than a mile down Third Street. 

“In public life,” the Corning Leader reads, “he was energetic for all that tended to the prosperity of his home city and was an active Democrat, always attending the ward, city, district and county conventions, but with a possible exception or two he was always declined offers of honors. In Masonic circles he was equally active and for a great many years had been a member of all the local bodies, excepting the Consistory, serving as Master of one body two terms. He also held the office of assessor for two terms and was town clerk, besides being actively identified with the school board.”

Richard’s service was held at Christ Church, and the Masons took charge of his service at Hope Cemetery (he was at one point a member of Hiram’s Mason’s Lodge, No. 144). His wife, Julia, survived him, and she lived until 1931. 

This is the first time I’ve mentioned Julia, and really, there is not a lot I know about her. She was born Julia Ann Havens on June 26, 1840 in Corning. They were married on March 16, 1863 in the First Presbyterian Church. She outlived her husband by twenty-nine years. 

It was only a few years ago that I learned the story of their early affair is actually preserved. Incredibly, the State University of New York at Oswego holds a collection of his letters, written to Julia Havens, soon to be my third great-grandmother. My uncle Dick—Richard Hill V—gave me digital copies of these letters, which I have only begun to transcribe.

Many were written prior to his enlisting. He was teaching at the time up around Lake Ontario, Oswego County if I remember. He was quite the writer: many letters, written in an elegant script, render romantic descriptions of winters, of sleigh rides and ice skating, and sometimes illustrated with drawings—one was of the school he worked in, showing he was quite adept with sketches. I have only begun to delve fully into them.

My uncle Vinnie, who still lives in Corning, took me to Hope Cemetery to show me Richard’s grave. I stood by the obelisk, which includes only Richard’s name. I would assume that Julia is buried there too—she died of complications from a stroke—but her name isn’t listed.¹

What strikes me most about Richard is that he seems so very much like me. I was astonished to read his writing—he is the only other Hill I know of who wrote. He taught, as I did for many years. He seems a remarkable man, and there he seems larger than life, a kind of giant. It is no wonder that the old myths and folk tales speak of the giants of the past, the Titans. Such people as my third great-grandfather—"a man of keen intelligence,” a holder of several offices and a man described as exceptional and energetic—seem almost incomprehensible in their stature.

Who am I, I ask, against such a one as this?

His letters I will return to, when I begin writing about my father’s male lineage, which he was so interested in—the Hill’s, who extend back to Puritan Connecticut, to a ferry keeper named Luke Hill, and his descendants, farmers who moved west into New York and finally into the city I visited only last August, pausing at Richard’s grave on the South Corning Road. Richard is that obelisk.

My uncle Dick had handed me the sword. The engraving on the hilt reads,

Presented to Lt. R. L. Hill as a token of regard by the Members of Co. E. 24^th Regt. N.Y.V. June 20^th 1862.

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, Hill rescued several men—they were to be overtaken by advancing Confederate troops, and Hill swam across the Rappahannock River in December to warn them. A soldier in the regiment named Robert Oliver, Jr., wrote his wife Pattie about it on December 18, 1862:

I was sent for and ordered to have my regiment fall back to where the brigade was. There I learned for the first time that we were to retreat, and my company was to be left out front to be either taken prisoners or killed. You can't imagine the feelings I had to thus leave my friends and comrades to the mercies of the enemy, for I was sure they would be taken; but I could not help it, and with an aching heart I left them. They did not know anything about it, or that the army was going to retreat. Well we got safely across the river, and Lt. Hill of our regiment, who is acting adjutant, was detailed to go and call in the pickets after the whole army had got safely across. He gave me all his money and a letter to his mother, and with a "God bless you, Major" left me to do his duty; and well did he do it, for all the pickets got safely across the river without losing a man. I was never so thankful to get out of any battle I was in as this one.

This was from an article by Charles M. Snyder, published in 1957 in New York History. It details, too, the movements of the regiment of which my great-great-great grandfather was a part, but I will write of that—as well as his letters to Julia—later. I am sure, when I come on it, I will learn more about those battles.

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1. At the Hope Cemetery I also discovered a reference to Amos W. Hill who died of diphtheria at the age of 14, subject of another post, “Suffer the Little Children” on my own substack,

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