James Calhoun Hill

(September 29, 1807 - November 17, 1879) Migrating in 1840 from Alabama to Texas, James Calhoun Hill led the first permanent settlers into this vicinity. He served on the commission that ran boundaries of Smith County and platted the county seat in 1846. Prospering as a surveyor and planter in the 1850s, he was blind and reduced in means by 1865, when the Civil War ended. In 1874 he donated land to bring a railroad into the county. He and his wife Rebecca Mar Hill had eleven children.