Sherrie Hill's HICKORY HILL
HICKORY HILL, Sherrie Hill's historical fiction novel about life on the real life salt plantation in Southeastern Illinois. Originally named Hickory Hill when the cornerstone was first set. It is locally known as The Old Slave House. The novel HICKORY HILL is historical fiction, but it's also a treasure trove of historical information and wonderful stories of times passed and lives lived. Hickory Hill plantation was built by John Hart Crenshaw and his wife Francine (Sina) Taylor Crenshaw. At times, the leased slaves on Hickory Hill required to bring it to life and run daily operations numbered in the thousands. If you added the number of leased slaves for the salt mines, you could double that number.
Hickory Hill was carved out of heavily wooded wilderness on top of a small cluster of hills surrounded by flat, forrested land in Gallatin County. Having lost his father when he was four-teen young Crenshaw struggled, working the salt mines from the very bottom up to gain control of the salt mines and obtain the salt leases from the State of Illinois. That determination would ultimately make him one of the major suppliers of salt for a growing population quickly settling a new land. He also became one of the richest men in the territory.
Sherrie Hill tells the historical fiction that fills in the gaps. More than fifty years after Hickory Hill was built CELESTE and LILLY were born and raised on Hickory Hill, one white and one black, in the shadows of slavery. Their lives would be intertwined for the next nine decades. HICKORY HILL tells stories of some of those lives that gave the plantation life.
