A Single Branch in Tennessee

There's a unique spirit to a good road trip. It contains the ability to move freely from one region to another. You can plan the destination, but who or what you encounter is unavoidable on the way. My ancestors embarked on unforgettable road trips during their lifetimes. From Ireland to Pennsylvania, New York across the Great Plains to Illinois, Maryland to Virginia, North Carolina to Tennessee. They all have stories about how they got there, ending in a place meaningful enough to make them stay – at least for a while. 

This story is about just one.

My grandfather Leslie Gerald Ames was born in 1914 in Iola, Clay County, Illinois. He and I share the same name, making him extra special to me. We met only a few times when I was young, as I was born in Washington, and he lived in Tennessee. But there was always something unique that words couldn't define beyond our shared link in the family tree. It had to do with Tennessee, a place that always intrigued me. I live now in Chicago, an eight-hour drive. Recently I found myself there several different times. My visits were both personal and for work. Still, I was able to explore and unravel some mysteries about my grandfather and Tennessee. During a photography conference on one of my last days in the Great Smoky Mountains, I uncovered something that connected me to him more than before. What I found wasn't handed down from a family member, located in a library, or a census document from history, but something from a stranger relayed unexpectedly.

It was late at night when several of us gathered around the communal campfire. There was a gentleman that stood outside of the circle, not part of our group. Over the years of traveling the world, I've learned to open conversations with strangers since you never know what you will learn. So I began conversing with him. He was local to the region, born and raised in Tennessee. I told him our group was from Chicago. Feeling awkward with my Yankee title from the North, I asserted that my grandfather had lived in and loved Tennessee, earning a special place for me. Sharing this mutual admiration, he relaxed his shoulders and started to open up. He was here with his wife and daughter, and they visited the Great Smoky Mountains several times a year. I proudly narrated that my grandfather had lived in Nashville on a mountaintop. He had bought it from Grandpa Joe on Hee Haw and named it Rocky Top. Two words in my family that forever have been associated with my grandfather Leslie and a place called home in Tennessee.

Over the years, I have shared the story of my grandfather with others, but I have not known much more. I ask the stranger naively, "I've recently noticed on my road trips that there are other places here called Rocky Top. When young, I believed it was the sole name of my grandfather's mountaintop. What does it mean?"

He begins to explain, "Rocky Top is an atmosphere in Tennessee. For locals, it is not a place but a spirit wherever you go."

I teared up as the stranger described Rocky Top because I knew exactly what he meant. I experienced it each time I was here. I stumbled upon it while walking woodland trails and rivers in the spring, between mountains with gaps and where fog rises in the valleys below. I saw it along rural country roads and on speckled hills in autumn with orange, red and green. But I also knew it was the one thing I could never define about my grandfather because it was his spirit, found in Tennessee.

Genealogy discoveries are generally found in documents online. Located in culture and history, one can even assemble a story of what life may have been like for ancestors that lived once before. Though I uncovered something not easily found there. It was a personal connection to a small piece of the world my grandfather experienced and treasured, making it more meaningful to have and share. Satisfied with my conversation with the stranger, I packed up to go home the next day. When I began researching my family tree, I saw threads yet to be seen – and discovered our ancestors had lived here before. Rocky Top was in our DNA.

It is Leslie's grandmother, Minerva Hill, that reveals nearly three hundred years of migration found in a single branch, including those who arrived, departed, and remained in Tennessee.

I believe this American ancestral line of Hill begins in April 1678 in Maryland at the Port of Baltimore, with the arrival of Robert Hill and several brothers from London, England. Robert was the son of John Hill, a London Goldsmith, though little of that money crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He was 28 when he arrived and likely an indentured servant of four years in exchange for his passage to America. He died young and destitute, leaving a widow and seven poor young children – but it doesn't end there.

Genealogist Charles Louis Weidinger states, "This family persevered and produced progeny in several Maryland counties as the state matured during the majority of the 18th century and spread south into the Carolinas shortly after the War of the Revolution. Later, others of this clan moved in search of new land into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio."

My family branch continues with four consecutive generations of William, including William Francis Hill Sr., who married Susannah Smithers from Caroline County, Virginia, in 1736. They lived in Virginia and had twelve children, including those named, ironically, William, Robert and John and the youngest, Judeth Hill. Before the American Revolution, he moved his family to Stokes County, North Carolina. Here he was a member of the Provincial Congress, which met at Hillsboro on August 20, 1775. His son, Reverend William T. Hill, Jr., was a Baptist minister with a son named John. Known as Big John Hill, he crossed the Great Smoky Mountains and was the first from this family to put roots in Tennessee. He was born in 1767 in Surry County, North Carolina and died in 1830 in Wayne County, Tennessee. He served under General Jackson in the Creek Indian War and was at the battle of Horse Shoe. He was called by the Indians "Captain Big John Hill" because of his size and strength. This explains some of the height and physical traits in my family. He married Obedience Cullom, also from Tennessee. Finding four subsequent generations of John, his son, John Greene Hill, kept roots and family in Tennessee. But it was his son John Goodner Hill that moved to Illinois, where we find Minerva, our subject from the start, and how our roots weave through Tennessee.

This ancestral line reveals an unbroken branch of three names. These are the names of my father and uncles, Robert, William and John, and not unforgotten my Aunt Judy, the fourth to be named. Coincidence or not, when Leslie Gerald Ames, my grandfather, had four children, he reproduced a direct, steady branch of first names that migrated, through Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Illinois, for three centuries.

I have always wondered why some families remain in one place while others move. I now see the pattern of what makes mine unique. Three hundred years of moving freely from one region to another are found in our story. A common trait of our extended family. With uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews spread from coast to coast – Seattle to South Carolina, Texas to Illinois, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, and those I don't know – we continue to migrate, each finding a meaningful enough place to make us stay, at least for a while.

There is one thing, though, that will not change. Where we all meet at the intersection of a single branch of the family tree. And where we can connect to the extraordinary place my grandfather lived, with the unique spirit found in our DNA.

The spirit of Leslie, Rocky Top and Tennessee.