Henry Branson Hill was a Quaker merchant and farmer, born in Randolph County, North Carolina, the eldest of the fourteen children of Samuel and Mary (Branson) Hill. In 1830 he was married at Back Creek Friends Meeting in Randolph County to Lucretia Henley (1808-1885), the daughter of Joseph and Penninah (Morgan) Henley. That same year they moved to Ripley Township, Rush County, Indiana, settling in a community populated largely by Quakers emigrating from North Carolina. There Henry B. Hill opened a dry goods store in the town of Carthage. In 1849 he was elected to the Indiana General Assembly, and in the same year became president of the Knightstown and Shelbyville Railroad. Although a Quaker, in 1862 he enlisted as an officer in the 16th Indiana Volunteers, serving in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas until 1863. He then served as Provost Marshall for the Fourth District of Indiana until 1865. William Penn Hill was born near Carthage in 1832. He was a student in Friends Boarding School, now Earlham College, in Richmond, Indiana, from 1849 to 1851. In 1853 he married Ann Mariah Hudeson, whose family lived both in Rush and Henry counties. Since Ann was a Presbyterian he lost his membership in the Society of Friends and later joined the Presbyterian church, in which he became an elder. He was a succesful dry goods merchant, first in Carthage and later in Knightstown, Indiana, where he lived until his death in 1896. In Knightstown, he served as a school trustee, and was for sixteen years a trustee of Hanover College. In 1865 he was one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Knightstown, of which he served as an officer until his death. Ann Mariah Hudelson was the daughter of William Henry Hudelson (1802-1886) and his wife Margaret Bradley (1800-1890), natives of Kentucky who settled in Rush County, Indiana, in 1828, later moving to Henry County. Among their children was a daughter, Jane Montgomery Hudelson, who in 1863 was sent by the Presbyterian church as a missionary to the freed people in Mississippi. After living four years in Tennessee and Mississippi, she returned to Indiana and spent the rest of her life in her home area and in Indianapolis.

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