Although born in Washington County, New York, Thomas Hill was a resident of the new town of Penfield when he enlisted at age 18 or 19. It is said that he had already been a member of the state militia, Captain Caleb Harrington’s company of the Twenty-second Detached Regiment.

Hill signed up for six months’ service about a week after the U.S. declared war on Britain. The Twenty-second Regiment was now largely reconstituted as the Twentieth Detached Regiment of New York State Militia, still commanded by Lt. Colonel Peter Allen. Captain Harrington’s company and the rest mustered in at the end of June and the beginning of July at East Bloomfield, where Colonel Allen resided. Together the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Regiments comprised the Seventh Brigade of New York State Militia under Brigadier General William Wadsworth. Governor Tompkins ordered the brigade and other militia units and Army regulars to the Niagara River to guard the frontier and prepare for an invasion of Canada.

The Twentieth first camped at Ft. Schlosser and Five Mile Meadow, before being sent to the south of Lewiston, where the invasion force massed. On October 13, 1812, the Seventh Brigade was engaged in the Battle of Queenston Heights, the first major battle of the war and the first American attempt at an invasion of Canada. It failed. Most of the army never crossed the river, although men from each regiment probably did. A handful from the Eighteenth and Twentieth Regiments were ordered to embark in the first wave of boats to cross the Niagara, but their places were taken by regulars, so the units remained on the American shore, awaiting transport while the British troops and Canadian militia fired upon the open boats. The Twentieth Regiment sustained a few dozen casualties, but there was apparently only one in the ranks of Harrington’s company, suggesting that Thomas Hill and his comrades were mostly spectators of the fight.

The Twentieth took part in a second failed invasion near Fort Erie on November 28. But Thomas Hill’s tour had already ended when he contracted measles and was furloughed at Fort Niagara October 25, 1812. He returned home but did not fully recover before his term of service concluded at Christmas. Hill re-enlisted at Penfield September 9, 1813 as a paid substitute for his brother, Asahel Hill, who had been drafted for three months’ service. Thomas joined Captain Enos Blossom’s company in Colonel Philetus Swift’s Second Regiment of New York State Militia under the command of General George McClure. Blossom was one of the pioneer settlers of Brighton.

Hill was among the garrison at Fort George, on the Canadian side of the mouth of the Niagara River, opposite Fort Niagara. The Americans had taken the British stronghold in May 1813, but they abandoned it in December, after making little progress following up their victory. As they withdrew from Canada side, they burned the town of Newark (now Niagara-on-the Lake), much to the horror of settlers on the American side who feared reprisals. Indeed, the Americans’ actions became a rationale for the British torching the public buildings on the frontier and in the District of Columbia. As Thomas Hill would have been mustered out December 9, he narrowly missed the undermanned Americans’ retreat from Fort George, their burning of Newark and part of Queenston, and the British capture of Fort Niagara and torching of Lewiston, Manchester (Niagara Falls), Fort Schlosser and Buffalo.

Almost 40 years passed before Thomas Hill received reimbursement for equipment (clothing, blankets, knapsack) he had provided for himself and for transportation to and from Penfield during the war. He never took ownership of 160 acres of western lands (in Arkansas, Illinois or Missouri) granted to him in the 1850s as a bounty for service, but instead sold his claim. By that time, he was in need of cash, having declared bankruptcy in 1842. A cooper and a laborer, Hill remained in East Penfield for most of his life, living northeast of Lovett's Corners. But he was a resident of Perinton in 1865 and was said to be at his son’s home in Batavia, Michigan in late 1870. He died March 13, 1876 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Perinton. He and his wife Lydia (Grinold) had two daughters, Lucy Ann and Mary, and two sons, Olney, a farmer and building-mover, and Henry S. (“Harry”), a blacksmith who moved to Michigan after the Civil War. Lydia worked as a weaver at least in the mid 1850s.