From The Connecticut River Valley in Southern Vermont and New Hampshire: Historical Sketches by Lyman S. Hayes, Tuttle Co., Marble City Press, Rutland, VT., 1929, page 341:
JABEZ HILLS–THE MOST ECCENTRIC CHARRACTER IN THE HISTORY OF BELLOWS FALLS
If any person had asked the business men of Bellows Falls of 60 years or more ago who was the most eccentric person, or interesting character, ever prominently identified with the business interests of the town, without doubt the response would have been unanimously "Jabez Hills." He died September 16, 1871, at 83 years of age, in an old forlorn room in what was then known as the "Pettis" block on the west side of the Square where is now the building occupied by the Goodnow, Jewett & Pillsbury store. Mr. Hills had owned that building over 40 years and it was replaced by the present block in 1899. He never married, and during his entire life he had evinced a singularly miserly instinct, approaching greed, for money getting that in his later years became a mania, and he was often spoken of as of unsound mind.
He lived the life of a recluse, having few friends or intimate acquaintances. Those who looked over his room after his death found on top of an old cupboard a tin teapot which contained about $700 in gold. Nothing else in the room was of value, it being filled largely with old tin pans that contained old rusty nails and bits of iron which he had picked up about town. His bed, which was nothing but rags, was of that nature that demanded that it be buried immediately in the bank behind the block.
A will was found containing only a dozen lines, which bequeathed his entire estate to a niece, Mrs. Harriet H. Bingham, of Boston, whose son-in-law, Hales [342] W. Suter, administered upon it until his death, and a portion is still owned by his descendants. That portion is now the Goodnow block, and the frame buildings leased to S. J. Cray. When Mr. Hills died he owned everything on the west side of the Square from the Trust Company's block to the School Street stairs, the location of the pressent Corner Drug Store, the old paper mill site with its valuable water power rights, and other property, all of which he had accumulated by foreclosures of mortgages. He never purchased but one piece of real estate, although he owned many at his death. He never sold one, the nearest to it being when he signed a lease of his water rights "'under the hill" to Hon. William A. Russell, April 15, 1869, the beginning of the important development of the water power, and the starting of the Fall Mountain Paper Company, and other important manufacturing industries of Bellows Falls. He had gold in the, bank amounting to $545 and currency $338, and other personal property amounting to $4,637, the total value of his real estate and personal property being $20,537.32 as appraised at that time. Probably he held more property than any other man here in his day.
Mr. Hills was born in New Ipswich, N. H., in 1788, and came to Bellows Falls in 1805. He was employed in the country store of Hall & Green, in a frame building standing where Union Block now does, on the east side of the Square. The Mr., Green was the father of Edward H. Green, the husband of Hetty Green of later years. For many years Mr. Hills wore an English queue and knee buckles, as many Americans then did. When Quartus Morgan, the first postmaster of Bellows [343] Falls, died, he was appointed to succeed him and he held the office 20 years, keeping it in the Hall & Green store. After 1830 he never had any business except to tend his hay scales, which were in the Square in front of where the bank block is now, and to accumulate money. He lived entirely alone and upon crackers and bread and moolasses, purchasing them in large quantities and keeping them in his one room. He dressed like a beggar, had a peculiar stooping posture and for the last 20 years of his life he wore the same old stove pipe hat, greasy, battered and worn beyond any semblance of shape.
In his old building where he lived was a basement used as a bakery, and in it was an immense brick oven. In this oven residents of years ago told the writer they had seen his bed and knew that he slept in the oven in cold weather. In his room in the second story of the building, in the southwest corner, he had a small wood stove in which he used to burn wood four feet long, pushing the sticks in as they burned off. Over this he would crouch and one spring when he came out it was found that his shins were burned from the ankles to the knees from sitting day after day so near the stove. Before he was 60 years old he, at times, would "dress up a little," having a blue coat with brass buttons with his then new beaver hat, but he was never guilty of such a sin later in life.
With only two men did he ever in his later life approach intimacy: John Sawtelle, the village cooper, whose shop was in the basement of his dwelling that stood on Westminster Street where the "Barry Block," now owned by Theodore Scurtelis, stands; and John [344] Billing, the village miller, and father of Mrs. Charles W. Butterfield.
It was common knowledge that for many years he started out of the village late in March, with his trunk containing his valuables and old clothes loaded on the center of two long poles. He would take up the front end of these, dragging the rear ends on the ground, and go across the river into New Hampshire for a few weeks to avoid taxation. The writer was told this by citizens who saw him on these pilgrimages. One year his trunk was found high up on Mount Kilburn and turned over to the Walpole authorities.
Late in life he rarely spoke to anyone on the street. He was pleasant to those who befriended him, but petulant and cross to those who made fun of, or laughed at him. Naturally a certain class of boys picked upon him and shied sticks and old boots at him, leading to many encounters and laughable, but pitiful, situations. Old residents used to tell many stories of Mr. Hills' oddities and almost unheard-of eccentricities, which fully justiifies the statement that no business man of Bellows Falls ever exhibited so many marked and singular characcteristics as he.
The line of ancestry of Jabez Hills was from Joseph who came from England in the "Susan & Ellen" in 1638, one of the first Speakers of the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the subject of this sketch being of the 6th generation from him.