General Daniel Harvey Hill

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Daniel_Harvey_Hill.jpg

[Update: It looks like we're not actually related to this Hill, but rather to a different Hill family in North Carolina. So, yay!]

With one exception (the Hancock line), most of my family left the South at the first opportunity. This includes a number of Scotch-Irish ancestors from the Carolinas who moved into the Midwest in the early 1800's, partly because of their opposition to slavery.

So I find it interesting that I'm related, however distantly, to a number of Southern leaders from the Civil War. I blogged earlier about the Dean connection to Zebulon Baird Vance. We are also connected, even more closely (although less certainly), to General D.H. Hill.

Daniel Harvey Hill was the son of Solomon Hill and Nancy Cabeen. He was the nephew of Jane Hill Baird, who is my 5xgreat-grandmother. (The reason I say this relationship is less certain than the connection to Zebulon Baird Vance is that the Baird genealogy, to be frank, is a total mess. Jane Hill Baird is not mentioned in the will of her supposed father, Colonel Billy Hill, which makes me wonder if that connection is truly proven. But onward...).

D.H. Hill was born on his grandfather's Iron Works in South Carolina (his grandfather being another famous military man because of the importance of his iron to the Revolutionary War.) General Hill's father died young, leaving his mother with few resources and eleven children. D.H. Hill, the youngest child, attended West Point and served in the Mexican-American War. Afterward, he became a professor of mathematics at Washington College (which is now Washington and Lee). He then moved to Davidson College, where he married the president's daughter, Isabella Morrison. Her younger sister married Thomas Jackson, better known to history as Stonewall Jackson, making Hill the brother-in-law of his future brother-in-arms. Throughout this early part of his career, Hill earned a reputation for being moodly, anti-social, and difficult to work with. (Gee, a mathematician with poor social skills. What a shock.)

During the Civil War, he served in a variety of posts, ending up as a General, but loosing field command twice because he got along so poorly with his superiors, including his brother-in-law, General Bragg, and General Lee. He was particularly blamed for the costly victory at Chickamauga, which kept him out of the fighting for most of the rest of the war, despite his acknowledged military skill.

After the war, he served as the first president of the University of Arkansas, resigning twice (but only having his resignation accepted once) because he got along so poorly with the faculty (sensing a pattern here?) He took on leadership positions at other universities, until he died in 1889, and was buried at Davidson College.