Mary Lee Brady, Ph.D.

Hill Generations, abt 1753

The numbers and names of African-Americans surnamed Finney, Frog and Hill during the Civil War recruitment revealed that though many lived free in Ohio, Pennsylvania and even New York, ... they were virtually all descended from slavery originated in Western Virginia.  Certainly, many had escaped or been born or set free in or out of Virginia.  It is uncertain, but assumed many knew or at least felt a kinship existed in their ancestral past dating back to Henry Hill, a prominent African-American veteran of the American Revolutionary War.

Many of these men died in the war or afterwards and left no heirs to remember them or tell their stories so long ignored and forgotten by a matriarchal oriented culture out of Africa that still has a hard time integrating its young males as valuable contributors.  Most African-Americans still do not celebrate memorial or veterans days for and about any war, ... and tend to view such as just another day off from work, like slave plantation Sundays.  The challenge exists for scholars and writers known to have links to men such as below to help tell the stories of dead men who tell no tales, but can still inspire young men to believe all was possible for, of, and by the true believers in our history (like emancipation of four million ignorant, uneducated and impoverished slaves).

The 1880 federal census reflects that he survived the Civil War killing fields and the KuKluxKlan aftermath of ex-confederate veterans avenging their defeat and loss of men like him as their slaves.