Background
Hans Justus Heydt, known later in America as Jost Hite, was born 6 December 1685, the second of the family of eight children of Johann and Magdalena. He was eleven years of age when his stepmother came to live with them.
Hans Justus Heydt, known later in America as Jost Hite, was born 6 December 1685, the second of the family of eight children of Johann and Magdalena. He was eleven years of age when his stepmother came to live with them.
It is said that Hite was a wealthy Alsatian nobleman and that he migrated from France to Holland because of religious persecution. In 1710 he sailed from Holland on his own vessel, the brigantine Swift. Accompanying him, on that ship and on the schooner Friendship, were sixteen Dutch and German families. With them he settled in the vicinity of Kingston, New York.
In America his name, originally Hans J"st Heydt, was subjected to various contortions, finally evolving into Jost Hite. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1716, settling first in the Pastorius colony at Germantown, then at Skippack, and finally at the mouth of the Perkiomen (Schwenksville), where he built a mill and, in addition to farming, engaged in milling and weaving.
On August 5, 1731, he purchased the Van Meter contracts for the settlement of 40, 000 acres of land in western Virginia, and on October 21, 1731, he and Robert McKay obtained an additional contract from the governor and council of Virginia for the settlement of 100, 000 acres.
In 1732 Hite took sixteen families from Pennsylvania to the Opequon, near what is now Winchester, Virginia. During the next few years he colonized the Van Meter grant. Thomas, sixth Lord Fairfax, entered a general caveat against the issuance of the patents, claiming the lands as within the bounds of the Northern Neck proprietary. Subsequent surveys proved this to be true and the colonial government recognized the surveys, Lord Fairfax promising to issue patents for lands granted by the Crown in the Northern Neck (1738). This arrangement was confirmed by the King in Council (1745).
Fairfax later refused to issue Hite's patents and gave patents to others for portions of the Hite grants. The controversy persisted for more than half a century and in 1786, after the death of both Hite and Fairfax, the courts finally decided in favor of Hite's heirs. The litigation engendered a bitterness that still persists.
Hite was twice married: first, in Holland, to Anna Marie Merckel du Bois, by whom he had numerous descendants; second, in 1741, to Maria Magdalena Staffen, the widow of Christian Nuschwanger.