Hitt

various tasks of reporting for the Federal side,
notably that for the Davis-Holt commission sent
to inquire into Fremont's proceedings in Mis-
souri. In 1871 he visited Santo Domingo with a
commission to investigate its resources with a
view to annexation. In 1872 he acted as re-
porter for the Ku-Klux committee of both
houses of Congress. On Oct. 28, 1874, he mar-
ried Sallie Reynolds of Lafayette, Ind. Two sons
were born of the marriage. In December 1874
he was appointed secretary of legation at Paris,
a post which he filled for seven years. The train-
ing in methods of diplomacy which he thus re-
ceived was to prove a great assistance to him in
his future career. He served as assistant secre-
tary of state during Elaine's tenure of the secre-
taryship in 1881. In 1882 he was nominated and
elected member of Congress from his district,
being, also, elected to fill out the unexpired term
of his deceased predecessor. He held his seat in
Congress without a break until his death.

Hitt's most important service in Congress was
on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which
he became chairman when the Republicans
gained control of the House in the Fifty-first
Congress; and thereafter he was chairman of the
Committee in the Congresses which the Repub-
licans controlled—the Fifty-fourth to the Fifty-
eighth. In this position, important as it was in
the days of the United States' rise to world pow-
er, his services were very great but in a consider-
able degree intangible. A few stand out: a ten-
minute speech prevented unjustifiable action
against Mexico in the Cutting case (Chicago
Tribune, Aug. n, 1886); he introduced resolu-
tions, Feb. 2, 1894, stating the American policy
in Hawaii and condemning Cleveland's restora-
tion of monarchy; he introduced the bill for pay-
ing the expenses of the Venezuela boundary com-
mission, Dec. 18, 1895; he reported resolutions
recognizing Cuban belligerency, Apr. 3,1896, as-
sisted in consummating the annexation of Ha-
waii in 1898, and defended the recognition of
Panama in 1903. He offered in the session of
1883-84 the minority report on Chinese immi-
gration (May 3, 1884), denouncing the bill as a
treaty violation; to this subject he repeatedly
recurred in later years. In the Forty-eighth and
Forty-ninth congresses he offered bills to regu-
late the exercise of extra-territorial jurisdiction.
He was active in favor of Civil Service reform.
In the session of 1887-88 he offered a bill to
establish a commercial.union with Canada, re-
curring to the subject in 1888-89 and 1890. In
1891-92 he agitated the question of the loss of
revenue by the importation of dutiable goods
over Canadian railroads. He died at his sum-

Hittell

mer home, Newport, R. I, in 1906, having served
in twelve successive Congresses.

[Portr. and Biog. Album of Ogle County, 111 (1886),
pp. 183 ff., 239 ft.; J. M. Palmer, The Bench and Bar of
III. (1899), vol. I; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby,
Hist. Encyc. of III. and Hist, of Ogle County (2 vols.,
1909), containing appreciations of Hitt's career by
Theodore Roosevelt and Frank 0. Lowden; Robert
Roberts Hitt . . . Memorial Addresses (59 Cong., 2
Sess,, 1907), and Cong. Record, 59 Cong., 2 Sess., pp.
3157 ff.; 374i &; Legislative Hist, of Robert R. Hitt
(1907), ed. by F, L. Davis, a collection of Hitt's speech-
es and resolutions ; obituaries in Providence Jour., Sept.
21, 1906; Chicago Tribune f Sept. 21, 1906.] T.C.P.

HITTELL, JOHN SHERTZER (Dec. 25,
i825-Mar. 8, 1901), journalist, author, statis-
tician, was born in Jonestown, Lebanon County,
Pa., the son of Dr. Jacob and Catherine (Shert-
zer) Hittell. He was descended from Peter
Hittell, who emigrated to America from Rhenish
Bavaria in 1720. With the generation to which
John and his brother Theodore [q.v."] belonged,
German ceased to be the mother tongue of the
family. After practising medicine in Lebanon
and Lehigh counties, Jacob Hittell removed his
family in 1831 to Hamilton, Ohio, where he at-
tained success as a surgeon and where Theodore
and John were placed in school. In 1843 John
was graduated from Miami University, having
followed a "Latin-Scientific" course. He then
undertook to prepare himself for the law, study-
ing it under a Hamilton lawyer, John Woods ;
but illness interrupted the effort, and he went
away to work on a farm in Hake County, Ind.
Later, when he was in Ottawa, 111., he was seized
with a desire to join the gold rush, and on May I,
1849, he set out in company with an oxtrain of
fortune hunters. He walked some 1,200 miles of
the distance to the Sacramento River, following
the Platte, Sweetwater, and Humboldt rivers,
and reached the gold fields in September. He
spent the first winter in the mines of Reading's
Diggings, at a place later known as Horsetown,
Shasta County, and then worked in diggings on
Cottonwood Creek. After moderate successes he
gave up the gold hunt in May 1850 and settled in
Sonoma, where he pursued the study of Spanish,
French, German, and Italian. In 1852 he moved
to San Francisco, forming a connection in the
following year with the Alta California, which
lasted until 1880.

In connection with this journalistic work Hit-
tell became noted as a statistician, obtaining his
information by personal visits to the scenes of
the great industries and agricultural areas. He
traveled eighteen months through Germany and
then returned to San Francisco in 1884 to dedi-
cate himself to authorship. Much of his work
was on guide books and almanacs, but among the

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