Jabez Hills was the oldest of the six sons of Jabez Hills (1699-1742) and Martha Metcalf (1699-1754). He was born 5 November 1727 in Wrentham, Massachusetts. 1
On 9 June 1752, he married Margaret Fisher, the seventh of twelve children of Isaac Fisher and Esther Mann. She was born 27 December 1728, in Wrentham.1
The first three children of Jabez and Margaret were born in Wrentham, Jabez on 17 June 1753, Timothy on 15 February 1755, and Joseph (Julia's ancestor) on 16 May 1758. 1 Hills Family researchers report that “In that year [1758] Jabez and his family removed to a farm through which passed the boundary line between Rehoboth and Pawtucket. Five of his children were born there…”2 Samuel was born 14 February 1760.3 William was born 5 December 1761.3 Martha was born 25 October 1763 but died in 1765.3 Margaret was born 18 December 1765.3 Martha Metcalf Hills was born 1 December 1767.3
Jabez and Margaret returned to Wrentham to have Samuel and each of their following children christened, even though they sometimes had to wait a year or more for that. Margaret was the granddaughter of Rev. Samuel Mann, the first minister of the Wrentham Church, and she may have felt especially close ties to the church there.
Jabez was said to be a builder, mechanic and chaise maker - that is, someone who made and assembled carts and carriages. Documents record his 1762 agreement to let Wing Lane be built across his property: land that was formerly owned by Samuel Smith.4
Jabez Hills died 6 December 1768 in Pawtucket,5, 6 only a year after the birth of his youngest daughter, Martha. After his death, Margaret Fisher Hills and her children returned to Wrentham, where she died less than three years later, on 12 September 1771.1 At the time of her death, Martha, was only 3, Margaret was 5, Billy was 9, Samuel was 11, our Joseph would have been 13, Timothy 16 and the oldest brother, Jabez, 18. What happened to the children after their mother's death? Their Hills grandparents had died previously, and so had Esther Mann Fisher, their maternal grandmother. Their Hills aunts and uncles were still in Wrentham/Franklin, as were their Fisher aunts and uncles, and some of them may have helped to raise the children.
Vital Records of Wrentham, Massachusetts, to the year 1850, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, 1910, pg. 85, 296, 465
Annual Report of the Directors (of the Hills Family), Vol. 1-14 p. 6
Hills Family in America.
The annotated index--Reminiscences 1853-1864, and Pawtucket (R.I.) - New Series 1866-1867 of Rev. David Benedict, authors: Johnson, Elizabeth J. (Elizabeth Jackson), Wheaton, James Lucas, Benedict, David, 1779-1874. p. 94,
Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, by William Richard Cutter. P 469
Genealogical data relating to the ancestry and descendants of William Hills,..and of Joseph Hills, the English emigrant to New England in 1638. Compiled by William Sanford Hills. P 103