[2] He attended the Selleck school in Norwalk before enrolling at Yale University in 1874, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1878.

[2] Hill then moved west to Oregon where he was hired as the headmaster of the Bishop Scott grammar school in Portland in 1879.

[2] In 1922, Oregon voters passed the Compulsory Education Act, an initiative supported by the Ku Klux Klan as an anti-Catholic measure that required attendance in public schools.

[3] Hill Academy and a society that ran several Catholic schools both sued the state to prevent the enactment of the law on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, and won in federal district court.

[6][7] In the years since the site has been home to several schools, and the 2.38 acre "Joseph Wood Hill Park" was acquired by City of Portland in 1988.

[2] Hill’s main building was a four-story structure with battlements on the exterior wall, and in general designed in the Scots Baronial Style.