Asa Hill of Rutersville
Rutersville, Fayette County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1788? - 1844) Born in Martin County, N.C. Married Elizabeth Barksdale in Georgia, Oct. 6, 1808. Came to Texas 1835. In army in 1836, was sent by Gen. Houston to warn people in enemy's path. Settled here 1839. In 1840, enrolled eight children in Rutersville College. With sons Jeffrey and John C.C., joined the 1842 expedition to Mier, Mex.; captured, he drew a white bean thus escaped death, but was in prison until Aug. 1843. Jeffrey was wounded, captured, likewise imprisoned. John C.C., then 14, was adopted by Gen. Santa Anna. Asa Hill died here; was buried on Cedar Creek, off SH 159. Incise on back of marker: In Memory of Jeffrey Barksdale Hill, son of Asa Hill; william Carroll Jackson Hill, son of Asa Hill; James Monroe Hill, son of asa Hill; Asa Collinsworth Hill, son of Asa Hill; John Christopher Columbus Hill, son of Asa Hill; Lucy Amanda (Hill) Jones, daughter of James Monroe Hill; Frank Webb Hill, son of James Monroe Hill; George Alfred Hill, Jr., grandson of James Monroe Hill; Thomas Lindsay Blanton, great-grandson of Asa Hill
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Asa Hill came to Texas in 1835 and served the young republic in 1836, riding ahead of the enemy to warn settlers in the army's path. In 1842 he and two sons joined the ill-fated Mier Expedition into Mexico, where Hill drew a white bean in Santa Anna's deadly lottery and escaped execution, though he languished in prison until 1843; his youngest son, John C.C., was famously adopted by Santa Anna himself. Hill settled at Rutersville, enrolling eight children in its pioneering college before his death in 1844.
Why it matters
The Hill family's ordeal in the Mier Expedition and the drawing of the black beans became one of the enduring sagas of the Texas Republic, a tale of frontier sacrifice on the contested Texas-Mexico border.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just after 1836, Texas was its own nation — the Republic of Texas — a raw, hopeful, and dangerous place. Anglo-American families were pouring in from the older Southern states, drawn by cheap land and the promise of a fresh start, but the new republic's independence was far from settled. Mexico had never truly accepted the loss of Texas, and the border along the Rio Grande remained a zone of raids, reprisals, and simmering war. To settle in Fayette County in the late 1830s was to plant a farm on ground that could still be crossed by armies.
This was the frontier generation, people who arrived with almost nothing and built communities out of prairie and post oak. They came for land, but they also came believing in the future of the place — enough to invest in churches, courthouses, and, remarkably early, schools. A family that reached Texas in 1835, served in the fighting of 1836, and put down roots by 1839 lived the entire arc of the republic's founding in the span of a few short years.
Rutersville itself embodied that optimism. In an era when most frontier children learned their letters at a kitchen table if at all, this little community became home to one of the earliest colleges in Texas — a bold statement that even on the edge of the settled world, education mattered. To enroll a houseful of children there was to bet, publicly, on permanence.
People & events
Asa Hill's life reads like the story of the republic itself. Born in North Carolina in the late 1700s, he married in Georgia and came to Texas in 1835, arriving just in time for the storm. In 1836 he served the cause of independence in a role that says a great deal about the man: General Houston sent him to ride ahead of the advancing enemy and warn the settlers lying in its path. It was unglamorous, urgent work — the kind that saved families rather than won headlines — and it placed Hill at the human center of the chaos as people fled before the army.
When the fighting settled, Hill turned to building. He put down roots at Rutersville in 1839 and, in 1840, enrolled eight of his children in the new college there — an extraordinary act of faith in a frontier future. But the border war was not finished with the Hill family. In 1842 Asa and two of his sons, Jeffrey and young John C. C., joined an expedition that marched into Mexico to the town of Mier. It ended in disaster: the Texans were captured. Jeffrey was wounded and imprisoned; Asa faced something colder still.
Their Mexican captors forced the prisoners into a lottery of life and death — men drew beans from a jar, and those who pulled a fatal color were executed. Asa Hill drew a white bean and lived, though he remained imprisoned until August of 1843. His youngest son on the expedition, John Christopher Columbus Hill — only fourteen — became the most famous of them all: his courage so impressed the Mexican leader Santa Anna that the general took the boy under his protection. Asa returned home to Rutersville, where he died in 1844, and the back of this marker carries the names of his sons, grandchildren, and descendants who carried the family's story forward.
Its place in the American story
The ordeal at Mier and the drawing of the beans became one of the defining sagas of the Texas Republic — a story Texans told and retold because it captured, in one terrible jar, the price of living on a contested border. Asa Hill's white bean was not just personal luck; it was a thread in a larger national memory of sacrifice that Texas carried with it when it joined the United States.
The Hill family's arc also tells a quieter, more typical American story: immigrants from the older states who moved west in a single generation, fought for the ground they settled, and then immediately invested in schools and community. That pairing — the rifle and the schoolhouse — is the frontier in miniature, and it played out across the whole expanding nation in the nineteenth century.
And in John C. C. Hill, a fourteen-year-old captive taken in by his enemy's commander, the marker preserves one of those improbable human moments that cut across the lines of war. It is a reminder that even in bitter conflict, individuals sometimes recognized courage and youth in one another — a small mercy inside a large tragedy.
If you visit
Come to this spot with the whole span of one family's story in mind. This is memorial ground in a quiet corner of Fayette County, and the marker rewards a slow reading — especially its back face, where the names of Asa Hill's sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are incised. Reading those names in order is like watching a single frontier family branch outward across the generations that followed the republic.
Let the setting do its work. The land here is gently rolling Central Texas country, and it takes little imagination to picture a rider carrying a warning across it, or a family arriving with everything they owned to start a college town from scratch. The marker notes that Asa Hill was buried on Cedar Creek, off a nearby state highway — a detail that ties the memorial to the living landscape around it.
If you're building a road trip through this part of Texas, treat Rutersville as a chapter in the story of the young republic. Pair it with other Fayette County markers and you'll start to feel how tightly these small communities were stitched together by the same era, the same border war, and the same stubborn faith in the future.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Asa Hill
- · John Christopher Columbus Hill
- · Antonio López de Santa Anna
Related events
- · Mier Expedition
Themes & tags
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