CHARLES HILL
Charles Hill was born into slavery in Frederick County, Maryland in 1828. According to a 1907 pension deposition from his wife, Harriet, they “ran away from Maryland together and when we got to Pennsylvania we passed as man and wife.” At the age of thirty six Hill mustered into Company H of the 127th United States Colored Troops at Camp William Penn on September 3, 1864. The regiment was assigned duty with the Army of the James- seeing action in the siege of Petersburg and Richmond. In April 1865 Hill was promoted to Corporal, and remained with the unit until its discharge in Brownsville, Texas in October 1865.
After the war, Hill moved to the Bendersville area of Adams County, Pennsylvania. There, he worked as a farm hand for Hiram Griest. Griest noted in an affidavit supporting Hill’s pension in 1898 that Hill went to work for him, “immediately after his return,” but was not as healthy: “he went away apparently sound and came back a physically wreck, complaining of Rheumatism, Piles and a troublesome Diarrhea.”
Charles Hill was a member of the Ashbury M.E. Church in Gettysburg. He passed in 1906.
All information taken from: Betty Dorsey Myers, Segregation in Death: Gettysburg’s Lincoln Cemetery (Gettysburg: Lincoln Cemetery Project Association, 2001), 67.
After the war, Hill moved to the Bendersville area of Adams County, Pennsylvania. There, he worked as a farm hand for Hiram Griest. Griest noted in an affidavit supporting Hill’s pension in 1898 that Hill went to work for him, “immediately after his return,” but was not as healthy: “he went away apparently sound and came back a physically wreck, complaining of Rheumatism, Piles and a troublesome Diarrhea.”
Charles Hill was a member of the Ashbury M.E. Church in Gettysburg. He passed in 1906.
All information taken from: Betty Dorsey Myers, Segregation in Death: Gettysburg’s Lincoln Cemetery (Gettysburg: Lincoln Cemetery Project Association, 2001), 67.