
The life of a local Black Civil War veteran featured in a permanent exhibit at the Gloucester County Historical Society Museum, was honored in a ceremony held by government, church, civic, and civil rights organizations at the Presbyterian Burial Ground in Woodbury, New Jersey.
The June 2024 event honoring Private Isaac Hill of the 29th Regiment of the Connecticut Colored Troops, was sponsored by the Gloucester County Board of Commissioners and Woodbury Juneteenth. It was based on the work of John Mills, a genealogist at the Alex Breanne Corporation, a Connecticut firm that researches the lives and work of African American enslaved people, including those who served in the Civil War’s U.S. Colored Troops. The company found a rare photo of Hill, further fleshed out his biography, and commissioned a new gravestone for the Woodbury clergyman, civic leader, and Union Army Colored Troop veteran.
In his opening remarks at the Isaac J. Hill Graveside Memorial Celebration, Master of Ceremonies and Director of the Gloucester County Board of Commissioners Frank DiMarco noted that Hill was one of a number of U.S. Colored Troop soldiers from the county who were initially interred in the Red Bank Colored Cemetery in Woodbury, separately from the white Civil War veterans buried in other local cemeteries. In 1962, the Red Bank Colored Cemetery was repurposed as a parking lot and its occupants moved to the Presbyterian Burial Ground.

“Today, we come together to rectify this piece of history,” said DiMarco. “We celebrate not only Isaac Hill’s life but also the restoration of his memory and its rightful place of honor. His new headstone is more than a marker. It is a symbol of respect and recognition of not just him, but all those who were with him at the Red Bank Colored Cemetery.”
In her remarks, Loretta Winters, President of the Gloucester County NAACP, read a proclamation, that in part, said, “…Whereas, during the Civil War, black soldiers… were treated as second class citizens… and Whereas did the denial of burial alongside Union soldiers at the whites-only military cemetery constitute a grave injustice, and whereas the connection between black soldiers’ sacrifice and African American civil rights is undeniable, therefore, be it resolved… that the we express our gratitude for Private Isaac J. Hill’s service, and we commit to preserving his story, along with other black veterans for future generations.”
Isaac J. HIll, the Man
One of 11 children, Isaac Hill was born in 1826 in Selings Grove, a farming town north of Harrisburg in central Pennsylvania. His family was part of a small community of mostly free, poor Black farmers. In 1832, when he was six years old, his desperately poor family rented Hill out to a man in Louisville, Kentucky. That southern city had more than 4,700 enslaved African Americans working on its wharves along the Ohio River, its tobacco fields, its whiskey distilleries, and its logging operations and lumber mills.
It was a slave-based society whose legal “Black Code” made it a criminal offense for any white person to teach a Black person to read or write. Determined to learn, and assisted by white friends he worked near, the teenage Hill secretly taught himself to read and write. When he was 17, his master discovered that he could read and write and banished him from Louisville, sending him back to Selings Grove. But ultimately Isaac Hill would continue to develop his writing talent and become a Civil War literary figure — one of only a handful of the war’s 180,000 U.S. Colored Troop veterans to write and publish a book about his and his unit’s experiences during the conflict.
Back home in Pennsylvania, Hill later married Mary Elizabeth Andrews and, by 1851, had become the pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Port Elizabeth, Cumberland County, New Jersey. When Civil War broke out in 1861, Hill was a 35 year-old resident of Woodbury, NJ, who wanted to join up to fight the Confederacy.
It was then illegal for Black men to join state militia, but they could work for them in ways that didn’t involve the training in, or use of, a weapon. Hill is believed to have joined the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry in such a non-combat role that likely involved digging ditches and working on fortification construction crews.
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves and reports began circulating that the Union Army was forming U.S. Colored Troops Units. The first to be organized was the 29th Connecticut Regiment of Colored Troops. After receiving this news, Hill left the Sixth Pennsylvania, trekked to New Haven, and enlisted in the 29th Regiment. It was the beginning of a journey that would take him through some of the Civil War’s most important battles.

Into the Fray
Richmond, Virginia, was not just the capital of the Confederacy. It and the neighboring city of Petersburg were the logistical hub of the entire Confederate military machine. The cities sat at the crucial intersection of the James and Appomattox Rivers, the major land roads, and the railroads that connected the Confederate army’s primary defensive lines and supply centers. The savage siege waged against the cities by Ulysses S. Grant’s Union Army lasted for 292 days and was the war’s longest and most destructive engagement. The battle zone was a hellscape of trenches, breastworks, and fortifications that stretched across 30 miles. The two armies raged back and forth for 50 miles on all sides of this through dense forests, rugged farmlands, rocky inclines, small hamlets, and lashing rainstorms. The siege ultimately produced more than 70,000 casualties at the same time it directly resulted in the Union capture of both cities — an event that forced the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.
Isaac Hill was in the middle of this historically monumental military campaign and, in his book, “A Sketch of the 29th Regiment of Connecticut Colored Troops,” published in 1867 he chronicled what he saw and experienced. Some passages from that work:
• Hill’s first encounter with Confederate troops occurred beyond the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers in 2 a.m. darkness. “We halted in a corn field in the rear of the advanced pickets, and for the first time laid on our arms in the open field,” he wrote. “I lay near the Colonel with the reins of my horse tied to my wrist, my gun in my arms half-cocked, and in this position rested the night with the rebels being within a stone’s throw.”
• “Eight o’clock in the morning found the whole brigade engaged in front of the enemy; we drove them five miles and at 1 p.m. were inside the rebels first line of works surrounding Richmond. We had a hard battle… but the colored troops carried the day… We lost quite a number of brave men… When I looked upon the dead and wounded, it was awful to see the piles of legs and arms the surgeons cut off and threw in heaps on the ground. We lay in front of the works all night. The bombardment was heavy on both sides, and we could frequently see the rebels carrying their dead and wounded out of their trenches and forts.”
• “The shelling was terrific all day; I went into the basement of the house where I formerly stayed. There were five of us in the basement, and a stray shell from the rebel gunboat came through the window and burst, passing over me and tearing out everything in the basement, but to the surprise of all, none of us were killed or wounded. The provost guard, having knowledge of my being in the house at the time of the explosion, exclaimed, ‘Hill is killed.’ A very intimate friend of mine, Mr. Jordan Jones, said ‘Boys, Hill is in the basement, and who will go in with me to bring out his remains?’ But the next moment I made my appearance on the back stoop facing the breastworks, just as they were coming in to see if we were dead.”
• “The 29th Regiment was put out on a skirmish and charged the rebel rifle pits and held them twenty-four hours. This was one of the most desperate battles of the campaign. We lost in the fight one hundred men killed and wounded. The fight lasted from 6 in the morning until 7 P.M.”
The Fall of Richmond
The coup de grâce of the Union Army’s victory came as the long siege succeeded and its troops moved it to the devastated Confederate capital of Richmond. Isaac Hill was in the first Union Army unit to enter the city.
• “I was standing on the bank of the James River viewing the scene of desolation when a boat, pulled by twelve sailors, came up the stream. It contained President Lincoln and his son (and several high rank naval officers).
• “When the President landed there was no carriage near, neither did he wait for one, but leading his son, they walked over a mile to Gen’l Weitzel’s headquarters at Jefferson Davis’ mansion, a colored man acting as guide… The President came among the poor unheralded, without pomp or pride, and walked through the streets, as if he were a private citizen more than a great conqueror. What a spectacle! The colored people waved their handkerchiefs, hats and bonnets, and expressed their gratitude by shouting repeatedly… President Lincoln walked in silence to the rebel capitol and from the steps delivered a short speech, and speaking to the colored people as follows:
“‘In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are — for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'”
Return to Woodbury
After the war, Hill returned to Woodbury to rejoin his wife and three children. He served as itinerant preacher for AME Churches in Gloucester and the surrounding southern New Jersey counties. He was also active civically and served as a delegate from Woodbury in the Independent Voters of Gloucester County, a local political party. He died of natural causes in 1882.
As the 2024 Gravesite Isaac Hill Memorial Ceremony was ending, Woodbury Councilwoman Donna Miller read a letter from Senator Cory Booker that said, in part:
“Thank you to all involved in appropriately honoring one of New Jersey’s fallen heroes, Private Isaac J. Hill. His published work serves as an invaluable historical record of the brave service of the African American troops who courageously fought for the abolition of slavery. Today, his work can be found in the United States Library of Congress. Safeguarding this great legacy, today’s memorial ceremony is a testament to the sacrifice of Private Hill and reminds us of the profound debt we owe to the Patriots who fought to secure the freedom of all Americans.”

~ ~ ~
Hoag Levins is a former newspaper and magazine journalist and a Trustee of the Gloucester County Historical Society.