All about George Washington HIll

My mom took her duty to teach her children about their ancestors very seriously. She used to tell us stories about all our different ancestors, and would read us excerpts from their Journals. Our very favorite was George Washington Hill, my grandfather's great-grandfather. He crossed the plains with the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley, and Brigham Young appointed him an ambassador to the indigenous peoples.

He was the original mountain man. He did all sorts of really cool things. He saved Parley P. Pratt from certain death, and had an opportunity to meet one of the Three Nephites (his mission president didn't let him keep the appointment - at least, that's our version of the story). Our favorite story was when he met a bear - it's a great story. He was part of Abraham Smoot's wagon train (Brother Smoot has a building named after him at BYU). Our favorite part was when Bro. Smoot was so freaked out by the bear he forgot he had a gun and he ran for it, letting George take care of it all by himself. George Washington Hill is like our family's version of Chuck Norris, except his beard was longer than Chuck's.

My story for Monsters and Mormons is taken strait from George's journal account of his encounter with the bear. A surprising amount of it is original text - it lends itself so well to a monster mash-up.

An amazing guy like George had to have an amazing wife. Cynthia Stewart Hill was raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama as a Southern Belle (like Scarlett O'Hara, but with more brains). She had a really cushy life, until her family joined the Church, then they were run out of town and left with practically nothing. Even after she married George, he was gone a lot of the time on various missions so Cynthia had to support the family with her spinning. (Yay spinning!) She harvested wild flax from the river banks and spun and wove it into men's suits.

I have a lot of really cool ancestors. On my dad's side, I'm descended from Eleazar Miller, who baptized Brigham Young into the Church. I'm also descended from Joseph Nathan Neibaur, who was Napoleon's personal physician. His son Alexander was the first Jew to become a Mormon. Most of the people in my family history aren't very important, but they have some neat stories and did some really cool things.