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Geo. A. Hill, Jr., the great grandson of Asa Hill made the dedica-
tory address at the time this monument was unveiled. He told his assem-
bled audience that one of the happiest experiences of his life had been
when, during the summer of 1935, he visited in the City of Mexico, Luis
Tornel, a distinguished lawyer, the son of General Jose Maria Tornel. He
to expressed again his family's appreciation to General Tornel and his
family for their outstanding kindnesses to John Christopher Columbus
Hill, whom the fortunes of war had thrust into their midst, and who had
been received by the Tornel family in generous and affectionate custody
as one of their very own.
Even as Asa and Elizabeth Hill had taken into their own home and
educated at Rutersville College the little Mexican fifer boy, Joseph
Mendes, captured by Asa's son, who was quite young himself at that time,
at the Battle of San Jacinto, even so did fate decree that Asa's own son,
John C. C. Hill, as a captive of the Mexicans, should receive the kind-
ness and paternal care of General Santa Anna and General Tornel and have
the advantages of an education in the famous School of Mines in Mexico
City, thereby procuring the release and parole of his father and broth-
er, Asa and Jeffrey Hill, from the dungeons of Perote Prison.
History records that in later years John C. C. Hill was enabled to
repay the kindness to him of General Ampudia, who had sent him on to
Mexico City from the town of Mier under special escort and with glowing
accounts of his bravery. At the time of the fall of the Empire of
Maximilian and Carlotta in 1867, General Pedro Ampudia and his brother
were adherents of the Empire, and were imprisoned and awaiting execution.
John Hill, who at the time enjoyed the friendship and the confidence of
President Benito Juarez, interceded in their behalf and procured their
pardon and release. At that particular time, John Hill was being visited
in Mexico City by his brother, Asa Collingsworth Hill, who later returned
to John's former home in Fayetteville with an account of this extraordi-
nary experience.
In the war between the United States and Mexico, Asa Collingsworth
Hill had commanded a spy company on the border, and in the war between
the States, James Monroe Hill and his two eldest sons, James Leonidas
Hill and John W. Hill, as well as his brother, William C. J. Hill, served
in the Confederate Army.
After Texas was annexed to the United States, another appointment
was given to William C. J. Hill in 1862 by the State of Texas, Washington
County, making him a commissioner for the Gay Hill Beat, for the purpose
of looking after the comfort and necessities of the families of soldiers
then in the Confederate Army. He reported to each regular term of Cou
what he had furnished each family from time to time, for which he w&
reimbursed by the Court.
In the battle of San Jacinto there was also engaged the first
cousin of James Monroe Hill -- Isaac Lafayette Hill, whose name is in-
scribed upon the monument erected by the State of Texas at Round Top, and
who had a distinguished career in the later period Texas history. He was
a brother of Benjamin Harvey Hill, Georgia's great statesman (a boyhood
schoolmate and cousin of James Monroe Hill in Hillsboro, Georgia) who
served in the Senate of the Confederacy and in the Senate of the United
States before and during the era of reconstruction following the war be-
tween the States. Senator Hill first opposed secession, but, after the
event, became its ardent champion. Isaac Lafayette Hill presided over the
meeting of Texas Democrats gathered at the site of the San Jacinto Bat-
tlefield on April 21, 1860 (two days before the meeting of the Nationai
Democratic Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23, 1860;
at which Texas Democrats presented the name of Sam Houston (who also
opposed secession) to the country as "the people's candidate for the
presidency." Resolutions were adopted at the battlefield conventions
looking toward the preservation of the Union and opposing matters creat-
ing internal discord. It is interesting to record that the government of
the Confederacy established, in its judicial system, two Federal judi-
cial districts in Texas, and another brother, a distinguished lawyer,
William Pinckney Hill, was appointed to this Federal Judgeship of the
Confederacy by President Jefferson Davis.
oooOooo
No, there was no way in the world that Ralph Hill, traveler from
Somerset, England, to New England in 1632, could have envisioned -- even
THE DALLAS QUARTERLY, Decembe , 1906