Hill completed his Master of Arts in history at BYU in 1955. He received a Ph.D. in American Intellectual History from the University of Chicago in 1968, studying under Martin E. Marty and writing his dissertation on Christian Primitivism and Mormonism. Hill attended the University of Chicago at the same time as Dallin H. Oaks, and their mutual interest in the murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in Illinois led to a ten-year research effort. Together they published the book Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith in 1975, when they were both working at BYU, Hill as a professor of history and Oaks as the university president. The book won the Mormon History Association's best book award for 1976.

Hill was a professor of American history at BYU starting in the 1960s. In 1972 he took leave from BYU to accept a post-doctoral research fellowship at Yale University. He has also served as president of the Mormon History Association and on the board of editors of the Journal of Mormon History.

In Mormon studies, Hill was a well known proponent of the New Mormon History and advocated a "middle ground" approach which didn't seek to describe Mormonism as authentic or fraudulent.

Hill married Lila Foster and they had six children and lived in Provo, Utah. He is the brother of Donna Hill, author of the noted 1977 biography Joseph Smith, the First Mormon.

Books

• Published concurrently in BYU Studies 17.

Articles

Other