A member of Petaluma’s early rivertown aristocracy, Josephine Pilkington Hill came from humble beginnings. Born in 1841, in Troy, New York, to James Pilkington, a traveling salesman, and Margaret Lonnon Pilkington, she traveled at the age of twelve with her parents and two brothers west across the plains by wagon train to Oregon.
In 1862, at the age of twenty, Josie made her way to San Francisco, where she met and married William B. Hill (1829-1902), also a native of New York, who had come to California to mine for gold in 1852, and then settled in the town of Petaluma in Sonoma County as a merchant and farmer. Over the first twelve years of their marriage, Josie gave birth to four sons.
In 1866, William used his riches to help form the Bank of Sonoma County, serving as its president until 1886, when he established the banking firm of William Hill & Son. By then, Hill was among the area’s largest landowners with 6,000 acres in Sonoma and Marin counties, including a 200-acre vineyard and winery. He also owned land in Mexico.
Despite William’s winery enterprise, Josie was an early temperance activist. A devoted member of the Christian Scientist Church, whose teachings informed her political and civic engagement, she attended the inaugural convention Pacific Coast Woman Suffrage Association in 1871 as a Petaluma delegate with other local temperance supporters. In 1879, she served as a founding member of Sonoma-Marin Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the first WTCU chapter formed in California, embracing the “do everything” reform initiative of the Union’s president, Frances Willard, whom the chapter welcomed to town in 1883.
In 1896, as California suffragists rallied behind a state ballot amendment granting women the right to vote, Josie became a charter member of Petaluma’s Political Equality Club, sponsored by the California Woman Suffrage Association, serving later as the club’s vice president. That same year the new club welcomed Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to town.
After the unexpected death of her husband William in 1902—which came soon after the deaths of three of her adult sons from tuberculosis—Josie and her surviving son Alexander built the Hill Opera House at Washington and Keller streets in William’s memory. Deemed by Josie “a temple of the thespian,” it was heralded as one of the finest playhouses in the state.
Josie also played a critical role in the development of the Petaluma Woman’s Club, donating the club a valuable piece of real estate on Washington Street, the sale of which they used to help fund construction of their B Street clubhouse in 1913.
At her stately Victorian home at 106 Seventh Street in Petaluma, Josie hosted numerous gatherings over the years of the WCTU, Political Equality Club, and Woman’s Club, and held elaborate luncheons for visiting speakers to town. Josie also made her house and the Hill Opera House available for religious services and lectures of the Christian Scientist Church, as the local congregation lacked a church building at the time. A generous philanthropist, she served as president of the Antietam Women’s Relief Corp and a trustee of the Harold Meacham Relief Fund.
Josie passed in 1918 after a long illness at the age of seventy-six, and was buried in the Hill Family plot at Cypress Hill Cemetery.
SOURCES:
Illustrated History of Sonoma County, Lewis Publishing Company, 1889
Petaluma Courier: Princely Philanthropy,” November 6, 1892; G.A.R. Installation,” January 13, 1893; “For Equal Suffrage,” October 30, 1896; “Equal Suffrage,” September 28, 1896; “James Vincent Hill,” July 15, 1899; June 24, 1899; William Hill,” July 31, 1902: “New Equality Club is Organized,” December 3, 1903; “A Christian Science Lecture,” June 18, 1909; August 15, 1909; September 7, 1911.
San Francisco Chronicle: “Woman Suffrage,” January 20, 1871.
Petaluma Argus: “W.C.T.U.,” June 13, 1878.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Pioneer Woman Crosses the Divide,” January 10, 1918.
