A favorite sub-topic of Henry Jones is Jost Hite, who is an excellent example of "Tradition Gone Wrong". Jost Hite is well known in the Shenandoah Valley, where he was an early settler. You might not recognize the man if you were to hear the family tradition which surrounded the man previously. He was said to be " An Alsatian Baron of Strasbourg , who fled to Holland after Louis XIV seized that city. He married Anna Maria DuBois, a French Huguenot refugee. Hite then sailed to America on his own ships, the brigantine Swift and the schooner Friendship, bringing not only bags of gold but sixteen Dutch and German families as tenants for land which he expected to settle."
Jost Hite is to be found in the 1710 immigrants to New York where he is associated with some other Germans in a pattern that is not random. The presence of the other Germans suggested that the region of interest might be the Kaichgau, southeast of Heidelberg. (This is the home of many Second Germanna Colony immigrants.) Genealogical pay dirt was hit in Bonfeld. The church books not only had recordings of specific acts but a listing of the emigrants from that village.
With the actual history known, one question was how the family tradition had arisen. Some parts of the tradition were understandable. The sixteen families were probably a reflection of the large number of families who purchased land in the Shenandoah Valley from Jost. He was responsible for the settling of a large number of people. The bags of gold? His father in Bonfeld was a butcher with above average property holdings. He could have had a little more money than most emigrants. Just south of Strasbourg there is a village by the name of Benfeld. Was Bonfeld remembered but confused with Benfeld? And since Benfeld was a small place, was Strasbourg substituted for Benfeld? His wife's name was Anna Maria Merckle and no hint is provided about how the wife of tradition entered the picture.
The uncovering of the whole Jost Hite story involved many people, including Klaus Wust and Ralph Connor. When the information was presented to the Hite family it sank like the proverbial balloon. But Henry Jones says he has been invited back to the reunions of the family, of which he is now an honorary member. In the end, truth is more pleasing than fiction.
The most important thing in uncovering Jost Hite was not the family tradition, but the people with whom he associated. There were perhaps strains of truth in the tradition but they were not as helpful as the associations. Sometimes to find one family, all the families of a region must be studied.
Tomorrow, Saturday, there will be no note as I will be leaving early to go New Holland for the Pennsylvania Chapter meeting of the Palatines to America. I feel that I should attend as I am the first speaker after lunch and charged with keeping the audience awake. At the Henry Jones talks, there was no problem about keeping the audience alert, even after lunch.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.