man. When he was only ten years old, he with his brother Henry, who was only eight, left their home and enlisted as drummer boys in the Revolutionary army at Albany. His original discharge, signed by General Washington and now in the possession of the daughter of the subject of this sketch, states the fact that on the eighth day of June, 1783, Nicholas Hill, sergeant in the First New York Regiment, " having faithfully served the United States for five years, and enlisted for the war only, is hereby dis charged from the American Army." At the foot of this discharge is a memorandum signed by Cornelius Van Dyck, LieutenantColonel, that the above sergeant Nicholas Hill has been honored with the badge of merit for five years' faithful service. En dorsed upon the paper in Mr. Hill's hand writing is the following: "My captain's name was Benjamin Hicks, Nicholas Hill." This discharge would indicate that Mr. Hill's connection with the army began in 1778, as five years from the date of discharge would only take the service back to that year, but the theory of Mr. John L. Hill of New York, the youngest child of Nicholas Hill, Sr., is that the term of years spoken of in the discharge is not exact. He says his father always spoke of his term of service as nearly seven years, and that he used to say that his enlistment was when he was only ten years old, and that it was in the winter of 1776. He was born in December, 1766. Mr. John L. Hill is of the opinion that his father and uncle, being then mere children, went to Capt. Hicks's company at the time indicated during the winter of 1776—7, and that, perhaps, on account of their youth, they were not enrolled as members of the com pany until 1778, although before enrollment permitted to play the fife or beat the drum in the company. However this may be, there can be no doubt that from the age of twelve to that of seventeen, Nicholas Hill, Sr., was an enlisted soldier in the American Army.
Mr. Hill, Sr., afterwards became a Meth odist minister. He is said to have been "a man of great physical strength, of great force of character, stern in principle, pure in purpose, simple, yet impressively elo quent and earnest." He had four wives, by each of whom he had children. The subject of this sketch, Nicholas Hill, Jr., was the ninth and youngest child of his first wife, whose maiden name was Anna Newkirk. She died in 1810. The youngest son of Nicholas Hill, Sr., the only child of his fourth wife, John L. Hill, Esq., is now a prominent lawyer in New York City. He was the eighteenth child of Rev. Nicholas Hill, and to him the writer of this sketch is indebted for many of the facts above mentioned relating to the Hill family. Rev. Nicholas Hill died in 1856, at the advanced age of ninety, his son Nicholas surviving him only about three years. Nicholas Hill, Jr., left his home at an early age to carve his own fortune. He maintained himself by teaching school, sur veying farms, and similar labors while he studied law, first in Montgomery, and after wards in Schoharie County, until in August, 1829, he was admitted to the Bar, and en tered into partnership with Deodatus Wright, then of Amsterdam, N. Y., afterwards of Al bany, and for a time justice of the N. Y. Supreme Court. Shortly afterwards, Judge Esek Cowen of Saratoga, who was engaged in the preparation of notes to Phillips on Evidence, associated Mr. Hill with him. This work, commonly cited as Cowen & Hill's Notes, is one of great erudition. Mr. O'Conor in his remarks at the meeting of the Bar above referred to, refers to it as a "gigantic task" of which he says Mr. Hill performed a large part. He also says that "whole libraries were taken up and their contents reproduced in a form the most use ful to the Bench and the practitioner that could have been devised." The work had been commenced and considerable progress made therein by Judge Cowen before Mr.
