John Hill removed to Danville in the pioneer period of that region, and on his farm of 300 acres (120 ha), a few miles west of the Connecticut River, he and his wife made a home.

Mary, strongly resembling her brother James, was the second daughter in the family, each one of whom possessed abilities of a high order.

She studied five years in Oberlin College, keeping pace with her husband so far as possible, while she also participated in the literary society and social gatherings.

Her domestic life was well-ordered, and her three children shared the most careful training, while Willard's intellectual and social gifts drew to their home a circle of choice friends from among the most cultivated women of Oberlin.

They formed a circle for study, long before a "woman's club" had ever been heard of, and kept pace with husbands, brothers and sons among the college faculty or in the student ranks.

Soon, Josiah was a leader in the church, a magistrate in the community and a legislator in the State, meantime having created a beautiful estate, which was named "Forest Home".

There, they passed twelve years, during which time they converted from Congregationalism to Methodism,[5] a Protestant denomination that placed an emphasis on social justice and service to the world.

With a genius, a consecration, a beauty and a youth which had outlived her years, a soul eager still to know, to learn, to catch every word God had for her, she lived on.

Given a face like hers, brave, benignant, patient, yet resolute, a will inflexible for duty, a heart sensitive to righteousness and truth, yet tender as a child's, given New England puritanism and rigor, its habits of looking deep into every problem, its consciousness full of God, its lofty ideal of freedom and its final espousal of every noble cause, and you and I shall never blame the stalwart heart, well-nigh crushed because mother is gone."

[10] A granite marker in honor of Willard was erected in 1934 by the W.C.T.U in the Stanton Schoolhouse yard, North Danville township, Vermont.