Kite

teacher and as president of the seminary was on
the whole conservative. From 1863 to 1870 he
edited the American Theological Review. In
1869 he became a life trustee of Amherst College
and in 1871 president of the Palestine Explora-
tion Society, a post for which he had fitted him-
self by a year of travel in Egypt and the Holy
Land. His last official act was to preside at the
dedication of the new buildings of the Union
Theological Seminary, which under his leader-
ship had removed from its original home in Uni-
versity Place to its new home on Lenox Hill. It
is an interesting commentary on the mutability
of conditions in New York that President Hitch-
cock in his address congratulated his colleagues
and the students of the seminary on having se-
cured a home which should be for all time. As a
matter of fact the life of the building he dedicated
proved to be just twenty-three years.

Hitchcock married, on Jan. 2, 1845, Elizabeth
Anthony Brayton, of Somerset, Mass., the third
daughter of Israel Brayton of that town. They
had three children. Hitchcock died at Somerset,
in his seventieth year.

[G. L. Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary
(1899) »" The New Schaff-Hersog Encycr of Religious
Knowledge, vol. V (1909); W. G. T. Shedd and others,
Addresses in Memory of R. D. Hitchcock (1887) ; Biog.
Record of the Alumni of Amherst Coll (1883); Gen.
Cat. of the Theol. Sem.t Andouer, Mass., 1808-1908
(n.d.) ; Gen. Cat. Bowdoin Coll. (1912) ; M. L. J.
Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family
(1894) ; N. Y. Tribunef June 18, 1887.] W. A. B.

KITE, JOST (d. 1760), colonizer of the Shen-
andoah Valley, was born in Strasbourg, Alsace.
It is said that he was a wealthy Alsatian noble-
man and that he migrated from France to Hol-
land 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 six-
teen Dutch and German families. With them he
settled in the vicinity of Kingston, N. Y. In
America his name, originally Hans Jost Heydt,
was subjected to various contortions, finally
evolving into Jost Hite. He moved to Pennsyl-
vania in 1716, settling first in the Pastorius colo-
ny 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 Aug. 5,1731,
he purchased the Van Meter contracts for the
settlement of 40,000 acres of land in western Vir-
ginia, and on Oct. 21, 1731, he and Robert Mc-
Kay obtained an additional contract from the
governor and council of Virginia for the settle-
ment of 100,000 acres. In 1732 Hite took six-
teen families from Pennsylvania to the Opequon,
near what is now Winchester, Va. During the

Hitt

next few years he colonized the Van Meter grant
and in addition settled fifty-four families on the
Hite-McKay tract, thus becoming entitled to the
ownership of 94,000 acres. 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 proprie-
tary. Subsequent surveys proved this to be true
and the colonial government recognized the sur-
veys, 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 Kite's patents and gave patents
to others for portions of the Hite grants. The
controversy persisted for more than half a cen-
tury and in 1786, after the death of both Hite
and Fairfax, the courts finally decided in favor
of Kite's heirs. The litigation engendered a bit-
terness that still persists.

Hite was twice married: first, in Holland, to
Anna Maria Du Bois, by whom he had numerous
descendants; second, in 1741, to Maria Magda-
lena Nuschwanger, widow of Christian Nusch-
wanger.

[Hite vs. Fairfax, 4 Call's Reports, 42-83; Revised
Code of the Laws of Va. (1819), II, 344-47; photo-
stats and copies of contemporary documents relative to
the Kite-Fairfax controversy in the Manuscript Di-
vision, Lib. of Cong.; Samuel Kercheval, A Hist, of
the Valley of Va. (1833); H. C. Groome, "Northern
Neck Lands," in Bull. Fauquier Hist. Soc. (Warren-
ton, Va.), Aug. 1921; W. Va. Hist. Mag., Jan., Apr.
1903; Va. Mag of Hist, and Biog., Oct. 1905, Jan.,
Apr. 1906; Pa. German, July 1909 ; H. Schuricht, Hist,
of the German Element in Va., vol. I (1898); J. W.
Wayland, The German Element of the Shenandoah
Valley of Va. (1907); G. N. Mackenzie, Colonial Fami-
lies of the U. $. A.t vol. IV (1914).] p. £.R.

HITT, ROBERT ROBERTS (Jan. 16, 1834-
Sept 20, 1906), congressman, was born at Ur-
bana, Champaign County, Ohio. His grandfa-
ther, Martin Hitt, had moved from Kentucky to
Ohio in order to emancipate his slaves; his fa-
ther, Thomas Smith Hitt, was a Methodist min-
ister ; his mother was Emily John of Brookville,
Ind. In September 1837 the Hitt family estab-
lished themselves near Mount Morris in Ogle
County, 111. Robert studied at Rock River Semi-
nary which his father had assisted in founding.
He went to Indiana Asbury University, now De
Pauw, in 1853, graduating in 1855. A year or
two later he set up in Chicago as a shorthand
reporter for court and newspaper work. At Lin-
coln's request he reported the Lincoln-Douglas
debates for the Republican side, and he was of-
ficial stenographer for the state legislature, 1858-
60, reporting, among other things, the testimony
as to the state-scrip frauds of Governor Matte-
son. During the Civil War he accomplished

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