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Life
1810-1900; b. Moyarget, nr. Ballycastle; son of a farmer and the df. of the Presbyterian minister at Ramoan; ed. Belfast Academical Institute [RBAI]; appt minister to Ballymoney and Crumlin congregation; lost his voice from a throat infection leading to retirement from preaching; appt. Librarian to Queen"s College, Belfast [QCB], 1850; catalogued the collection; he edited the Montgomery Papers and wrote histories of Ulster family incl. the McDonnells of Antrim and the Stewarts of Ballintray; issued An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century, 1608-1620 (1877) which showed an even-handed appreciation of native farming methods at that the era; retired from the Library in poor health and moved back to Moyarget, 1880; lived there in poverty; received a grant of £200 from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1880 but failed to gain a civil list pension; d. 4 July 1900; bur. Balmoral Cemetary, Belfast; there is an appreciate by F. J. Bigger (‘Portrait of Rev. George Hill’, 1897) and a Life by Robert M"Cahan (Rev. George Hill, Ulster Historian and Poet, 1919). DIB/RIA
Works
Historical account of the MacDonnells of Antrim (1873);
An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century, 1608-1620 (Belfast: M'Caw, Stevenson and Orr 1877).
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Quotations
Historical Account: ‘Sir Thomas Phillips made a journey from Coleraine to Dungannon through the wooded country ... and thereupon wrote to Salisbury, expressing ... his unfeigned astonishment at the sight of so many cattle and such abundance of grain ... The hillsides were literally covered with cattle ... the valleys were clothed in the rich garniture of ripening barley and oats; while the woods swarmed with swine ... 20,000 of these being easily fattened yearly in the forest of Glenconkeyne alone. (Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster; q.d.; quoted as epigraph to John Montague, “A Severed Head”, in Collected Poems, 1995, p.30.)
A sociable lot: ‘The pleasure the people feel in assembling and chatting together, made them consider the removal of the houses, from the clusters or hamlets in which they were generally built to the separate farms, a great grievance.’ (Quoted in Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways, 1957, p.32.) Evans calls him a ‘reforming landlord’ (idem.).
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References
Belfast Public Library lists A Historical Account of the Plantations (1877)] and other Ulster historical works incl. studies on the McDonnells of Antrim and Stewarts of Ballintray (1865).
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Notes
John Philip Cohane (The Indestructible Irish, 1969), quotes at length remarks by Rev. George Hill, librarian at Queen’s Univ., Belfast, during 1850-1880, on the efficiency of native Irish farming before the Ulster plantation: ‘We are generally accustomed to believe that the Irish of Ulster, in the seventeenth century, were ignorant of all agricultural pursuits, including, of course, the management of domestic animals. Our plantation records, however, show us clearly enough we have been mistaken to a very considerable extent in this conclusion also. Their knowledge and management in such matters would fall far short, to be sure, of our present requirements; but, as compared with their neighbours, whether English or Scottish, it is pretty evident that the Irish of Ulster only wanted peace to enable them to excel both, as agriculturalists. [...]’
Namesake? George Hill, a liberal landlord and author of Gweedore: Facts from the County Down (1846; 5th edn. 1887).
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