This is a very tentative attempt to sketch in the general history of the Hills who lived in Soham from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. It is based very largely on the evidence provided by the parish registers and the various censuses from 1841 onwards. Both the parish registers and the censuses are however fallible; the former are frequently illegible and on occasion there are gaps in the entries, usually at a crucial time. As ages are not given it is often difficult to tell which of say four William Hills has just been married or buried, or which William is the father of the newly baptised child. Early censuses are also unreliable particularly about age. So all conclusions drawn from both sources must be accompanied by more than a pinch of salt. Having made these provisos however there is little doubt that we can trace an unbroken line of Hills in Soham from at least the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. In 1561 the parish register records the baptism of Agnes Hills and in 1563 the baptism of another Agnes Hills. In all probability the first Agnes had died but we can't be sure as there are no burial records and her parents are not named.. Of course it is very unlikely she and her anonymous parents were the first Hills to live in Soham (Hills had been paying taxes in Burwell and Fordham since the fifteenth century) but without records we can't be sure when the Hills first arrived in the village. Initially perhaps there was just one family of Hills, but by the middle of the seventeenth century it would perhaps be more accurate to think of them as a clan with wide variations in the fortunes of the component families. A map of Soham in 1656 shows the house of William Hills on the edge of Qua Fen Hills Cottages on Qua Fen Common, Soham within it own large enclosure ( which had been quite obviously filched from the Common at some time) The same William (1616-1686) was paying tax on three hearths in 1674, his brother Oliver on four, but another Hills, Matthew, was exempted from tax because of poverty. Oliver and William were not rich in comparison with Robert Hammond who ten years before was being taxed on ten hearths but a big gulf had opened up between them and the least successful Hills. (Perhaps of course this gap went back many years.) There appears to have been a lasting connection between the Hills and the commons- East Fen .and Qua Fen. The 1841 Census shows roughly half the Hills families situated on or near these commons. As these families seem to have possessed little land in the open fields they were probably graziers making use of the commons in winter and then transferring their cattle and sheep to the Fen when it had dried up in summer. No doubt the poorer families eked out a living by digging turf for fuel, cutting sedge and trapping wild fowl. A few cows and many geese would also help to supplement the meagre wages paid to them as farm labourers. The boundary between farmer and farm labourer was easily crossed, William Hills (born 1784) was noted down as a farmer in 1841; 10 years later he was a labourer. We don't know the reason for this but it might have something to do with the agricultural depression of those years. This William was a direct descendant of the William mentioned earlier and was also a distant relative of Oliver Cromwell. In general this branch of the Hills had maintained the prosperity attained in the seventeenth century. William's brothers appear to have flourished as wine merchants or booksellers after a move to Ely. William however hi addition to his economic problems had the misfortune to produce in his son Joseph (born 1816) the family black sheep. Joseph was already in trouble at the age of 16 when he had to pay maintenance for a bastard child of Sarah Jackson. A year later he was in much more serious trouble because he was found guilty of theft and sentenced to transportation to Australia where he proceeded to populate Tasmania. Apart from the odd black sheep however this branch of the Hills appears to have been talented and prosperous. Although not so distinguished by his ancestry the James Hills who emigrated to America in 1852 had similar enterprise and initiative. James was probably a descendant of yet another William Hills born in 1711? (the date is problematical as is his ancestry). This William married an Ann Cater and their son James was the grandfather of the emigrant James. The latter James was born in 1817 and married Elizabeth Mann in 1837. His father, John, was a small fanner and as James had several siblings, and by 1851 a family of six, his prospects in England were not good. He decided to emigrate and like many other poor families in England chose America. The journey was very dangerous with a high mortality rate, but surprisingly the whole family survived and prospered in their new country. James was able to set himself up as a farmer of 80 acres. His descendants thrived and today are in touch with Soham again. William and Ann started another branch of the family through their son John born in 1738. John married Mary Cap of Soham in 1764. (These facts are a little uncertain because of the paucity of the evidence.) John and Mary's descendants seem to have among the least prosperous of all the Hills. Their son William born in 1767 lived into his eighties but always worked as a servant or labourer By the time of the 1851 Census he was 84 but he was still noted down as an agricultural labourer. He had married Sarah Spillman, a girl from an impoverished family, in 1791. Their son William born in 1796 was my great great grandfather. The 1851 Census tells us he was an 'agricultural machine man' - whatever that means. Perhaps he worked with some of the early threshing machines. There was very little other machinery employed on farms at this time. Like his father he was long lived, lasting until 1883 when he was 87, not 90 as was reported at the time. He had married Susannah Palmer in 1823. Their son, yet another William, followed in his father's footsteps; he was another 'agricultural machine man. This time however we can be more specific, as at the marriage of one of his sons William is described as a traction engine driver. Unlike his father and grandfather however he died relatively young at the age of 53, only a year after his father. Like the other William Hills over a hundred years before he had married an Ann Cater. (I wonder if he was aware of the coincidence.) Then- oldest son Eddy Cater Hills remained in Soham all his life working as a farm labourer. Eddy's wife Lucy (born Hawkes) Lucy Hills, seated front left with Elizabeth far right and two other members of the Hills familyworked at one time as the caretaker of Soham's Shade School. Another son, William went to London where he worked as a docker. His son Eddy, named after his uncle served in the Royal Artillery during the First World War and was killed in the great German offensive in 1918. None of the Soham Hills were killed largely because as farm workers they were exempt from conscription. Descendants of the London Hills appeared in Soham during the Second World War as evacuees. It was the third son of William and Ann, George, born in 1871 who was my grandfather. He attended the new Shade School and was ambitious to become a pupil teacher, but family legend has it that the family could not afford the cost of his training and needed the money he could bring in by immediate employment. There may well be an element of truth in this as it was exactly at this time his father William died (!884). After this disappointment George is said to have worked on the Manchester Ship Canal after having walked from Soham to Lancashire. By 1891 however George was in the army serving in the XX Hussars cavalry regiment stationed at Mhow in India. Here he attained the, perhaps acting, rank of corporal. He was transferred to the reserves in 1897 but was called up again for the Boer War in which he served in the X Hussars and took part in the mad, frenzied dash from Cape Province to the North which ended the first part of the war. Invalided out with typhoid fever (much against his will) he came back to Soham and worked as a smallholder down the Mere. He also worked as an unofficial vet. In 1905 he married Jessie Cater. They had three children Evelyn, Winifred and Ann Elizabeth. Ann Elizabeth Hills, always known as Betty, married a Cyril Barker from Saffron Walden and was my mother. George died in 1940. George HillsHe had been a much respected and popular member of the community and had earned endless pints at the Bushel and Strike by tales of his adventures hi India and Africa. The death of his son Evelyn in 1968,childless, ended the male line of this branch of the Hills and also ended the connection of the family with Qua Fen as he had been the only one of the family to be born there. Fortunately many other Hills survive not only in England but also in America, Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to the miracle of the internet their contact with their old country and town is greater now than it has been for 150 years.

 

Article kindly Submitted by Mr Derek Barker, Leicestershire.