Possible European Origins:
Page County
Hite Family

Research into the background of the Page County Hites did not positively identify their parents in Pennsylvania records but circumstantial evidence in tax records strongly suggests that they were sons of a couple named Andreas and Magdalena Heyd of Chester County, Pennsylvania. This Andreas Heyd, who was naturalized in 1750, was the same Andreas Heyd who arrived in Philadelphia, September 26, 1737, on the ship St. Andrew. The naturalization record described him as a Quaker, but that term appears to have sometimes been used generically for several different pacifist sects, including Mennonites. 

 

Although there is no evidence that he was originally a Mennonite, he may have married into a Mennonite family.

 

More than twenty years ago, research in Germany revealed a possible place of origin for the 1737 immigrant, Andreas Heyd. The year after his arrival, more Heyd immigrants came to Pennsylvania on the ship Robert & Alice, arriving in Philadelphia, 11 September  1738. This family was from the vicinity of the town of Kusel in the Palatinate and included Conrad Heyd (born 1690), his eldest son Abraham (born 1711), Abraham’s wife Magdalena (maiden name Keiss or Keiser), their young son Abraham (born 1734), and Conrad’s third son Peter (born 1715). Conrad’s wife, Anna Catharina (maiden name Hess, first married name Scholler) may or may not have lived long enough to be on the voyage. Conrad and Anna Catharina also had two other sons, Andreas (born 1713) and Jacob (born 1718 but died in infancy).

 

The possibility that this Andreas Heyd (born 1713) was the 1737 immigrant was immediately worthy of consideration because he did not travel with his father and brothers in 1738 and there was no further record of him in Germany. With the use of the names Abraham, Andreas, and Conrad, this seemed like a likely family of origin for the Page County Hites. But other DNA tests cast doubts on that idea. The younger Abraham Heyd (born in 1734) married in present-day Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, in 1758 to Elisabeth Sieg and had a large family. Two of his sons (Michael and Abraham) relocated to Shenandoah County, Virginia, in the 1790s where the spelling of their surname became Hite. Male-line descendants of both of them took the DNA test. Had they matched the Page County Hites, it would have proved the connection of all of them to the Heyd family of Kusel. But although the descendants of Michael and this younger Abraham did match each other, they did not match the Page County Hites. The paper trails linking these two natives of Pennsylvania, born in the 1770s, to the Heyd family of Kusel is solid. This seemed to disprove the idea that Kusel was the ancestral home of the Page County Hites. 

 

However, as with many of the families involved in the Y-chromosome testing, the Page County Hites match with some men who do not have the surname Hite, Heyd, or any of its variants. One of their closest matches, with a different surname, is a man with the surname Schultheiss, who is German. One of the Page County Hite relatives who took the test reached out to this man and learned that he was from the Kusel area. This test subject, who was not aware of the results on the descendants of Michael and Abraham Hite of Shenandoah County, took this as further evidence of the Page County Hites’ alleged origin in Kusel. Research in records of Kusel and the surrounding villages and towns shows that Schultheiss—like Heyd—is an old name in that vicinity. There were interactions between the two families in the past, with people named Schultheiss acting as witnesses to Heyd baptisms in the 17th and 18th centuries. There were some intermarriages in the 19th century.

 

There are several possible reasons for this match:

 

1. The match may just be coincidental. Mutations may have occurred in both lineages to make the men appear related when they are not.

2. Andreas Heyd (born 1713) could have been the biological son of a man named Schultheiss rather than Conrad Heyd, who was recorded as his father. This seems unlikely though, because while the Page County Hites are probably all direct descendants of the 1737 immigrant Andreas Heyd, it is doubtful that all of the other DNA-identified relatives are. It is particularly unlikely that James Hight (1751-1848) who was originally from New Jersey was Andreas Heyd’s son.  It is much more likely he was a son or grandson of a different immigrant who was related to Andreas.

3. There was a “nonpaternal” event in the lineage of Michael and Abraham Hite of Shenandoah County. They are sons of Abraham Heyd (1734-1799), the child who was on the ship Robert & Alice that arrived in Philadelphia in 1738.

 

This third possibility must be given serious consideration in light of the fact that the Y-chromosome of the Page County Hites and their extended kin network has been found in Kusel. Because Michael Hite (born early 1770s) and Abraham Hite (born between 1778 and 1785) match each other, there is no doubt that they were biological sons of their father, Abraham Heyd (1734-1799).  However, there are reasons to question the paternity of Abraham (born 1734) and/or that of his father Abraham Heyd (born 1711). 

           

The Abraham Heyd, who was brought to Pennsylvania as a child in 1738 was born 19 July 1734 and christened in Kusel. His parents, Abraham Heyd and Magdalena (Keiss or Keiser) had married only a month earlier (8 June 1734). The marriage record does indicate that the couple married after a premature cohabitation. But with the younger Abraham’s birth occurring only one month after the marriage, the possibility that his biological father was someone other than Abraham (born 1711) cannot be discounted.

 

Then there is the matter of the elder Abraham and his parents. The Abraham who married in 1734 was born 14 September 1711 in Diedelkopf (near Kusel) and baptized in Kusel soon after. His parents, Conrad Heyd (born 1690) and the widow Anna Catharina (Hess) Scholler, had married only four months prior to his birth—12 May 1711 to be precise. Thus the possibility of an illegitimacy in this generation cannot be discounted either. The fact that Abraham (born 1711) was the oldest child of Conrad and Anna Catharina Heyd and was born only four months after their marriage make it far more likely that he was fathered by someone else than for any of his younger brothers to have been the product of an extramarital affair.

 

The only way to resolve this question is to test a male line descendant of a brother or male-line cousin of Conrad Heyd (born 1690). If such a person’s DNA reading matches that of the sons of Abraham Heyd (1734-1799), then it is obvious the origins of the Page County Hites is elsewhere. If the DNA reading were to match that of the Page County Hites though, it would show that they were descendants of the Heyd family of the Kusel area after all and that there was a nonpaternal event in the generations between Conrad Heyd (born 1690) and his documented grandson Abraham Heyd (1734-1799). 

 

If it does turn out that the Page County Hite Family and their extended kin network are descendants of the Kusel Heyd family after all, then the match between them and the test subject with the Schultheiss surname begs explanation. 

 

There are three possibilities –

 

1. The Schultheiss test subject’s direct male line extends back to a Heyd.

2. The earliest common male ancestor of the Page County Hite family kin network estends back to a Schultheiss.

3. The Heyd and Schultheiss families have a mutual male line ancestor who lived prior to the time either family had surnames.