Nelson: Buried truth: Pete Hill’s family roots run long and deep in Virginia soil
From Zann Nelson at the Orange County Review on June 13, 2018:
Baseball Hall of Famer and most likely the son of former slaves, John Preston “Pete” Hill, born in the village of Buena, Culpeper County, Va. in 1882, lived his entire adult life north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
He played ball, not for fame or fortune, but like so many of the early players, he was driven by a genuine love of the game. When he could no longer play competitively, he managed the team. Then with some irony, his later life brought him back to the very same mechanism that gave him his first opportunity — the railroad.
Time tends to eradicate records; letters are destroyed, and contact information lost. Pete’s induction into the Hall of Fame in 2006 rekindled the fires of family connections and a desire to re-establish ancestral roots.
The primary source of data for non-property-owning residents is the federal census data. Significant facts have been discovered proving that the Seals and Hill families lived for decades in the area of Buena in Culpeper County and Rapidan in both Orange and Culpeper.
Read the full article here: https://www.dailyprogress.com/orangenews/opinion/zann_nelson/buried-truth-pete-hill-s-family-roots-run-long-and/article_2f34c91c-6f3a-11e8-bb6f-87e20be36767.html
Originally published: June 21, 2018. Last Updated: June 21, 2018.