Death of Samuel Hills
Mr. Samuel Hills died on Saturday at the residence of his son in law, Horace Davis on State Street, this city, aged 83. He was taken sick with pneumonia on the Tuesday previous. His wife had left only the day before for a visit to the west. The funeral was observed this forenoon.
Mr. Hills was a veritable early settler. He came to Wellsville to reside in 1835 – fifty years ago, when there wasn’t any Wellsville town or village – and has lived here ever since. In that day there were just three log houses to represent what is now the thriving growing chief town and business centre of Allegany. One of those houses was where the Fassett House now stands, another where the Hanrahan black smith shop now is, and the third was somewhere between but further to the east.
Gardner Wells, whom Wellsville was named after, then owned nearly all the land now covered by the corporation. He offered Hills an acre of ground, the centre of which was where the Howell House now stands, if he would clear it and fence it, and Hills wouldn’t take it. The land wasn’t worth the labor in that day.
A readable book might readily be written of the events clustering about Mr. Hills advent and long residence among us.
Wellsville Daily Reporter Feb 24, 1885 - Researched & submitted by Mary Rhodes.