He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and one of the co-founders of the Order of Gimghoul, and graduated maxima cum laude[3] in 1889 with a Ph.B.

[4] While attending Columbia, John Sprunt Hill met and became romantically involved with fellow-student Annie Louise Watts, daughter of North Carolina businessman George Washington Watts, who had co-founded the American Tobacco Company with James B. Duke.

[2][5] In September 1903, shortly after the birth of their first child, George Watts Hill, John and Annie decided to relocate their family to Durham, to go into business with his father-in-law.

[2] In 1913, Hill traveled to Europe in an effort to study rural credit systems that had sprung up there in response to widespread poverty.

North Carolina of that time was more than 80% rural, and the economy farm-based, with a majority of residents living in poverty.

[9][11] In 1917, John Sprunt Hill, George W. Watts, James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke donated a sum of $8,500 to purchase the old Stokes homesite on Fayetteville Street, in order to relocate and expand Lincoln Hospital, Durham's primary hospital for African-Americans in the days of segregation.

[13] The decline in tobacco sales during the late-1920s, due to blight, spurred the need for farmers to market other farm products.

[13] These early curb markets were evidently operated exclusively by women—offering "an extra source of income through the sale of poultry, eggs, baked and pickled goods, and fresh flowers and vegetables in season.

As of 2008, the Junior League of Durham and Orange Counties makes its home here, although it is open to any group meeting the aforementioned criteria.

[5] Hill served as chair of the building committee during the 1920s, when the university received its first major state appropriation for new construction since the American Civil War.

[5][16] A lifelong student of history and literature, on May 9, 1948, Hill established an endowment fund for the North Carolina Collection of the UNC Library.

"[17] In 1935, they donated the hotel to the university, stipulating that the profits from the Inn would support what would later become the North Carolina Collection in UNC's Wilson Library.