Near Site of Trading Post of Dr. George Washington Hill

Spring Hill grew around Hill's trading post, and the Handbook of Texas gives its life in small dates. Families settled near the post the year after it opened and named the place for its first settler and the nearby springs. A post office began in 1849, and a year later settlers raised a rawhide building to serve as church and school. The Houston and Texas Central bypassed the town for Corsicana in 1871, and the post office closed in 1906, when one teacher had seventy-one pupils. About forty people remained in 1939.

What the plaque says

Near Site of Trading Post of Dr. George Washington Hill (1814-1860) Dedicated frontier physician and public servant to the Republic and State of Texas. Born in Tennessee, Hill received his medical degree from Transylvania University. He came to Texas in 1836, where he was a surgeon for Fort Houston at the opening of his lifelong practice. In 1837 Hill became the medical censor for Milam County. Later that year, he moved to newly created Robertson County, where he married Miss Matilda Slaughter. He entered public office as Robertson County Representative in the Congress of the Republic, 1838-41 and 1842-43. In 1838 Hill was reported operating a trading post near here. His home, called Spring Hill, became the first settlement in Navarro County. Later that year, however, it was connected with a tragedy. A few days after spending the night at Hill's place twenty-one surveyors (including Hill's brother) were virtually annihilated by several hundred Kickapoos. Hill was named Indian agent for the Republic in 1841, and in 1843 he became secretary of war. After Texas joined the Union he served in the Legislature. Throughout these years he continued to practice medicine, facing many dangers in order to render aid. In 1853 Hill County was named in his honor. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 18 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 19 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 24 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Hill County Courthouse — 24 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.

More markers nearby

• Dr. George Washington Hill — 2.0 mi
• Navarro Mills Community — 2.3 mi
• Brushie Prairie Methodist Church — 2.4 mi
• Braniff International Flight 352 — 3.7 mi