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Hill, John Alexander "Alex"
(1867-1939)
Hill (née McDougall), Rachel Melinda
(1876-1962)
John Alexander “Alex” Hill was born in Ontario on July 14, 1867. He moved to Manitoba where he married Rachel Melinda McDougall in Plumas, Manitoba, in 1894. Rachel was born on October 12, 1876, in Woodville, Ontario.
Travelling on the recently completed Canadian Pacific Railway, Alex and Rachel Hill moved to British Columbia from Plumas, Manitoba. They built two houses on 8th Street in North Vancouver. While living in North Vancouver, Alex was a foreman with the Canadian Pipe Company installing a large wooden water pipeline for North Vancouver which started at Lynn Creek. By 1911, Alex, Rachel and their family had moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he worked as a carpenter, and later on as a dairyman.
In 1925, Alex and Rachel bought a dairy farm on Sea Island on No.13 Road (later named Miller Road). Their dairy farm faltered when sixty of their ninety cows contacted tuberculosis and had to be destroyed. Alex sold his dairy trucks to the Grauer farm.
Alex died on January 3, 1939. After Alex’s death, Rachel started a daffodil farm. Her property was expropriated during the Second World War for the Burkeville subdivision. The Hill property became the location of the new Sea Island Elementary School. When Rachel left the property, she gave away all her daffodil bulbs to the residents of Burkeville. Rachel’s daffodils filled the ditch by the Sea Island Elementary School. She died in 1962 in Richmond, British Columbia.
Alex and Rachel Hill had ten children: Esther Keller née Hill (1895-1988), Alice Roberta Simpson née Hill (1897-1972), Annie Elizabeth Hutchings née Hill (1898-unknown date), Frances Georgina Dunwoodie née Hill (1900-1965), Jane “Jennie” Alexandra Mitchell née Hill (1902-1967), Rachel Ermine Ramsay née Hill (1905-1981), Kenneth Alexander Hill (1908-1980), Ellen Mary Nixon née Hill (1910-1998), Sarah Octavia Hardman née Hill (1911-2003), and Harold Armstrong Hill (1918-1990).
To view the Hill family tree on Ancestry or obtain further information, contact Barb Nielsen at barbaralynnnielsen@gmail.com.