The Woman Behind the Man: Anna Maria Merkle Hite

My Hite ancestors are from my maternal Manning line. Jost and Anna Maria Merkle Hite were my sixth great grandparents.

“Who Do You Think You Are” did a segment on Tim McGraw (turns out he's a very distant cousin), and part of the story focused on Jost Heyd/Hite, known as a pioneer responsible for settling the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Typical of histories, it credited the man, but not the woman behind the man, Anna Maria Merkle.

By all accounts Jost Heyd and his bride, Anna Maria, were more comfortable than many when they married in 1704 in Germany.  She was of a prominent family; he was a linen weaver, son of a butcher. However, times in Palatinate Germany were hard, and in 1709 they joined thousands who emigrated to England with hopes of resettlement to the Americas. By the time they left England in 1710, expenses and fees had reduced their circumstances so that they were placed on the subsistence list. They were sent to an ill-conceived New York settlement near Kingston which was supposed to produce pine tar for shipbuilding. Promises of land and support were broken; some of the settlers spent their first winter in caves.

Nevertheless, by 1714 Jost’s family was able to move to Philadelphia County where he purchased 150 acres on Skippack Creek. In 1718 they purchased 600 acres on Perkiomen Creek and built a grist mill (which became Pennypacker Mills). By 1728 the family owned considerable property and he was a community leader. Anna Maria had probably established a very comfortable home (except for the occasional Indian troubles).

Pennypacker Mill homestead

So what did Jost do? He sold everything to speculate on 140,000 acres of land in the wilds of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia!

His wife and extended family had to leave their established homes, pack essentials into wagons, and move to newly charted lands in Indian territory. For a good part of the trip they had to create their own roads, and when they arrived they had to build their own homes … hovels to start with … in which to live. I can only imagine the conversations husband and wife must have had!

Ruins of Jost Hite's Tavern near Stephen's City, Virginia

After bearing eleven children, making four daunting moves (Germany to England to New York to Pennsylvania to Virginia), and establishing multiple homes from scratch only to leave them, Anna Maria died in Virginia in 1739, six years after they moved there. She was 53, and they had just moved again, this time a short distance from their tavern south of Winchester, VA, to a more comfortable new home across the road.

Mill house across Route 11 from the ruins of the tavern

Was she equal in ambition to Jost, or a long suffering wife? We will probably never know. But if Jost is credited as a pioneer and granted the title “Baron of the Shenandoah," Anna Maria should receive equal billing as the “Baronness.”