Jost Hite (Hans Joist Heydt), his wife Anna Maria Merckle, and their infant daughter Mary left their home in Bonfeld, Germany in 1709/10.  Others from their village, including Jost’s father and his family,  also emigrated to America from Rotterdam at about the same time.  Records show the families settling near one another in the colony of New York.
        Settling first in the New York Colony, he moved to a large tract of land above Philadelphia where Germantown was later laid out.  Originally a linen weaver, Hite was engaged in farming, weaving, and milling in Bucks County, and he built a mill and sold farms from his property on the Schullkill River.  Some of his transactions were with William Penn.  In 1731, hearing of newly explored Indian lands available in the Virginia Colony, he secured a grant for 100,000 acres in order to organize a settlement of 100 colonial families and fortify this trackless territory lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  His character is revealed by his refusal to bow to rent demands of the powerful Lord Fairfax for these lands legally claimed by Hite.  Although this matter lingered in the courts for over 50 years, settlement eventually came in Hite’s favor some 30 years after his death.
       Hite made numerous surveys of the land and settled the immigrant families, including his own, in favorable locations.  With his wife and younger sons, he and his oldest son John first settled on the Opecquon Creek six miles south of the present Winchester.  Separate homes were built in the 2,000 beautiful and productive acres of this Spring Dale settlement, but the land, forge, mill, and stone fort were held in common. He reserved for himself 900 acres of fertile and beautiful land where he built his home, Long Meadows.  Within it was “Travelers’ Hall” which welcomed adventurers, explorers, and even friendly Indians.  The mansion and land was recorded in the name of his third son, Isaac, while he was still a minor.  It was there that Anna Maria died. Three years later he married again, to a widow, Maria Magdalena Neuchanger.
      His grandchildren were numerous and their lives remarkable:  at least twelve fought in the Revolution, several were pioneers in Kentucky and Tennessee, one married a President’s sister and lived in a home designed by Thomas Jefferson, and one, tragically, was massacred by Indians.
        In his last years, Hite lived a simple life with no interest in possessions, moving frequently.  He died in 1761, probably at the home on the Opecquon where he had lived in during the early days in the valley.  He was buried at Bunker Hill Church (the first Episcopal Church west of the Blue Ridge Mountains), which he attended.  A hundred years later, during the Civil War, the stone churchyard walls and the grave markers were taken by Union soldiers to be used as chimneys at General Sheridan’s nearby camp.  Jost Hite’s grave cannot now be located.

     Their daughter, Elizabeth Hite, was the first child of the family to be born in America.  She was born in Kingston, New York in 1711. She married  Paul Froman before 1732 while the family was still living in Pennsylvania.. Nothing is known of his family except his father's name, Peter, and the tradition that they were Quakers of New Jersey. The children of Elizabeth and Paul were born in the Shenandoah Valley, but the parents migrated on into Kentucky where Elizabeth died after her husband's death  in 1783.

     In about 1753, their daughter, Maria Christina Froman, married William Overall whose land bordered that of the Froman family in the Shenandoah Valley. She died about 1780, perhaps shortly after five of her children had left Virginia to become pioneers in Tennessee.