Hill family.

John Hill, the son of Roger and Sarah Cross Hill, was born in Saco, Maine in 1666. Roger Hill had settled with his father, Peter Hill, in Biddeford near the mouth of the Saco River sometime before 1648. In 1686 John Hill entered into partnership with Francis Backhouse (modernized to Backus) to build a sawmill. He served in the military during King William's War, spending most of his time at a fort in Saco. While at Saco he also acted as an agent in building vessels for Col. William Pepperell of Kittery. He married Mary Frost in 1694. After resigning his military commission in 1699, he moved to Berwick and became a farmer and owner of sawmills, some of which he owned jointly with John Plaisted. He died in 1713.

John Hill's son John, whose papers make up the bulk of the collection, was born in 1703. Early in his life, he was appointed a justice of the peace, later becoming an associate justice and then chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He was a representative to the Massachusetts General Court and a member of the Massachusetts Governor's Council from 1755 to 1771. He entered the military as an ensign in 1727 and left as a major in 1754. He also continued in the lumber and sawmill business in Berwick. John Hill married Elizabeth Gerrish and they had several children. After her death in 1763, he married Sarah Frost Blunt. John Hill in died in 1772.