Caldwell County MO Archives History .....ELDER R.C. HILL IN KINGSTON TOWNSHIP 1854 AND HAMILTON 1968 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com August 30, 2008, 4:23 pm

ELDER R.C. HILL IN KINGSTON TOWNSHIP 1854 AND HAMILTON 1968
	Narrator:  (Doc) Fielding Wilhite Hill, 82, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Hill is a son of Rev. Robert Chapman Hill and Mary J. Hume who came 
from Virginia to Warren County, Mo. in 1834, then to Knoxville, Ray County, 
then to Caldwell County in 1854 before the Civil War.  F.W. (Fielding Wilhite 
was the name of a favorite Baptist preacher) was born in Warren County.  In 
Caldwell County, they lived on a farm about three quarters of a mile from 
Kingston, the present Tantlinger farm.  They were there when the Civil War 
came.  They bought part of this farm from John C. Myers who was killed during 
the war.
     The Hill family were southern sympathizers and two boys, Robt. Livingston 
and Thos. S. enlisted in the Southern Army.  The militia stationed at Kingston 
continually plundered the Hill place and wore out their horses.  The three 
youngest boys, (F.W. was nine) did the ploughing to keep the farm going.  
Finally after seeing friends killed in the militia activity and in order to 
get out before they lost everything to the militia, they moved to Kentucky in 
1863.  In 1869, they returned to Caldwell County and bought a 4 acre plot and 
built a house on it, west of Hamilton.  (This place now belongs to Joseph 
Smith and while on the outskirts of Hamilton, is in town-limits.)  The old 
minutes of the Hamilton Baptist church show that Brother R.C. Hill united by 
letter with the new church May 1, 1869 and left Nov. 1869.  Mr. R.C. Hill 
traded his place in 1869 to Clark Martin for a farm near the present Cowgill 
where the family continued to reside.  F.W. Hill also established his own 
family on a farm in the Cowgill neighborhood.  He married Mary Eliza Tydings 
of Monroe County, Mo., whose people were from Maryland.  Her father was Edward 
Tydings and her mother, Amanda Lane.
     He told of school life at Kingston in the 50's.  It was a one-room school 
close to the present Smith brick home.  Fellows often went to school till 
twenty-five years old.  His first teacher there was named Quinn.  He studied 
Ray's arithmetic and Webster Blue back Speller.  They used home made copy 
books of fool's cap paper.  The teacher made a copy at the top of the page to 
follow.  The seats were made of sawed logs with peg-legs, were without backs 
and could be moved.  A big desk stood at the side of the room where pupils 
went when they wished to write.  A blackboard was at one end.
     His father, Elder Robt. C. Hill, was a missionary Baptist preacher even 
before he left Virginia.  He organized the Cottage Grove Baptist Church near 
the southern line of the county in the early 70's.  This church was first 
organized in the schoolhouse; then when it was strong enough, the church 
building was erected.  Later, this early church was moved to Cowgill where it 
is now used for a town hall.  In those days, a would-be Baptist preacher often 
studied at home and then was publicly examined by the church officers and 
generally ordained in his home church.
     Rev. Robert C. Hill, his wife, and some of the other Hills are buried in 
the Cottage Grove cemetery, originally in the yard of the old Cottage Grove 
church.
     Interviewed  June 1934.


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