Hill

in three years. On graduation he entered upon
the practice of law in partnership with his father
at Macon, and when only twenty-one he was ap-
pointed on a commission to revise the code of
Georgia. On the elevation of his father to the
bench, he formed a law partnership with Na-
thaniel E. Harris, a classmate at the university
and later governor of Georgia. Chief Justice
Simmons of the state supreme court declared
that Hill was the best brief maker he had ever
known at the Georgia bar, and he was generally
referred to as "the scholar of the Georgia bar."
For five years he was a member of the law fac-
ulty of Mercer University at Macon. He was
one of the organizers of the Georgia Bar Asso-
ciation and served as its secretary, 1883-86, and
as president, 1887-88. Throughout his connec-
tion with the Association he was most active in
using the organization of lawyers to effect need-
ed reform in legal procedure and in raising the
standard of legal education and admission to the
bar. He was also a member of a committee of
the American Bar Association appointed to make
a study of the business of the federal courts with
a view to relieving the congestion on the docket
of the United States Supreme Court, which was
at the time about five years behind with its cal-
endar. The circuit courts of appeal developed
as the result of the work of that committee.
Aside from his legal activities Hill was an out-
standing figure in the Methodist Episcopal
Church South, and was also interested in the
cause of prohibition in Georgia, being called the
"apostle of prohibition" in the state. He wrote
occasional speeches and essays of which the most
important, probably, was Anarchy, Socialism,
and the Labor Movement, published in 1886.

In 1899 the board of trustees of the University
of Georgia elected Hill chancellor, breaking the
long tradition of electing a clergyman to the of-
fice. In a few years he injected into the univer-
sity community a new impulse, a new vision, a
new determination. This spiritual revival was
his prime contribution to higher education in the
state. His tangible accomplishments, however,
were of first importance. He induced the gov-
ernor and the board of trustees of the university
to visit the University of Wisconsin in order to
see a great modern state university in opera-
tion; he allayed the bitter hostility of the less
liberal leaders of -certain denominations; he pre-
vailed upon the legislature in 1900 to recognize
the university in the annual appropriations bill;
and he obtained appropriations for several new
buildings, the first to be erected in many years.
He also gained for the institution a new library,
presented through the generosity of a personal

Hill
friend, and began a campus-extension movement
which ultimately resulted in the expansion of
the campus from 36 to 1,200 acres. Through his
efforts also the system of university secondary-
school inspection and certification was initiated
with funds which he secured from the General
Education Board, and, most important of all,
under his guidance the College of Agriculture
and the Mechanic Arts was reorganized involv-
ing the creation of a State College of Agricul-
ture, though the act creating the college was
passed the year after Hill's death. It has been
calculated that the money value of the legisla-
tive appropriations and private gifts obtained by
the university during the six years of Hill's ad-
ministration was nearly three times as much as
the institution had received from similar sources
in its entire history up to that time. When Hill
died suddenly in the winter of 1905 from an at-
tack of pneumonia, his passing was regarded as
truly disastrous. In 1879 Hill married Sallie
Parna Barker, of Macon, Ga. To them four
children, two sons and two daughters, were born.
Hill was a reserved man with little joviality or
popular appeal, but those who were associated
with him in any intimate way retain lasting im-
pressions of his nobility of character.
[Report of the Twenty-third Ann. Sess. of the Ga.
Bar Asso. (1906) ; Bull, of the Univ. of Ga., memorial
number, May 1906; Albert Shaw, "A Great Citizen of
Ga.," Am. Monthly Illustrated Rev. of Revs., Feb.
1906; sketch by W. W. Landrum in W. J. North en,
Men of Mark in Ga.t vol. IV (1908) ; the Atlanta Jour.,
Dec. 28, 29, 1905.3 R.P.B.
HILL, WILLIAM (i74i-Dec. 1,1816), South
Carolina ironmaster and Revolutionary soldier,
is said to have been of English stock transplant-
ed to north Ireland, where he was born. Upon
arriving in America, he settled in York County,
Pa., but soon migrated to what is now York
County, S. C, in April 1762 taking out a land
grant for 100 acres on Bowers Mill Creek. Be-
fore the Revolution he acquired grants aggre-
gating some 5,000 acres, in various localities,
but mainly near Nanny's Mountain, where iron
ore was believed inexhaustible. With Isaac
Hayne [q.v.'] he began iron-works on Allison's
Creek, and in March 1776 secured a loan of
£1000 currency from the South Carolina treasury
to complete it. In 1779 he advertised JEra Fur-
nace in blast, offering—wholesale or retail—
farm tools, smiths5 tools, kitchen-ware, swivel-
guns, and cannon up to four-pounders with their
balls. He also advertised for a hundred negroes,
but is said to have had to send "all the way to
Troublesome Iron Works in Virginia" for labor
(Hill, post). The furnace operated on the Cat-
alan plan, the ore being reduced with charcoal