Hill, Abraham Wiley, House
5 mi. SW of Hills Prairie, Hills Prairie, TXIn Bastrop County's rolling countryside, south of the Colorado River, Abraham Wiley Hill (whose name appears in various records as Abram Wiley Hill and A. Wylie Hill) established his plantation home. The house which Abraham Wiley Hill built for his family in the 1850s was a large columned, two-story frame, late Greek Revival residence. While Hill was not an outstanding historic personage, the house he constructed is among the finest mid-nineteenth-century Greek Revival houses in Texas.
Hill was born in Georgia on February 10, 1816, and immigrated to Texas with his brothers in 1835. The Hill family appears to have been one of the 140 families which John G. Mchee organized in 1833 in Alabama and Georgia, and brought to Texas in January 1835. The area south of the Colorado River which later formed the rural community of Hill's Prairie was first settled in 1829 by Edward Jenkins who received a land grant from the Mexican government. Jenkins was killed by Indians shortly after receiving his grant. This land and adjoining acreage were settled by the Mchee colonists and on July 7, 1835, Abraham Wiley Hill purchased over 2,000 acres of land from Jenkins' widow.
In 1836, Hill fought in the war for Texas Independence. According to his Service Record (No. 697), he served in Captain Karnes' company from April 12 to July 12, 1836. As a part of Karnes' company, he scouted for Sam Houston's army and was at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. On July 12, 1836, Hill joined Captain John G. McGehee's ranger company as a substitute for M. M. Hill. Whether this McGehee was a variation in the spelling of Mchee, the name of the man who organized the 140-family colony in 1833, is unclear.
About 1838, Hill brought Evaline Elizabeth Hubbard from Georgia to Bastrop as his wife. In the 1840 census of the Republic of Texas, A. W. Hill of Bastrop County is listed as owning, under the complete title, 2,299 acres, 9 slaves, 45 cattle, and one wagon.
Hill lived in the house until his death on December 29, 1884, and in 1887 the property was sold to Earl c. Erhard, in whose family the property has remained. The house, which is in fair condition has been boarded up and unoccupied for a number of years.
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.