He was born in Parramatta to William Hill and Mary Johnson, both emancipated convicts.
He was a carpenter's apprentice and by the late 1820s was managing William Wentworth's Vaucluse estate.
In 1868 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Canterbury, where he remained until his defeat in 1877.
On 27 January 1832 he married Henrietta Cox, the sister of W. C. Wentworth's wife; they had eleven children.
A close supporter of Henry Parkes, he was a founding member of the Aborigines Protection Board in 1883.