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European Origins:
Jost Hite
Georg Heyd -(birthdate unknown, died between 1679 and 1684, possibly in Kirchheim am Neckar, Baden-Württemburg, Germany, although his death is not recorded there). He was not a native of that village – his birthplace is unknown. His wife Katharina (maiden name unknown) died 11 July 1684 in Kirchheim am Neckar, aged 72 according to the church record (she was probably younger). They had at least five children, the last four of whom were born in Kirchheim am Neckar between 1651 and 1660. The oldest was born elsewhere.
Their son - Johannes Heyd – baptized 30 Auguest 1654, Kirchheim am Neckar. He married 7 June 1679 in the village of Jagstfeld, Baden-Württemburg, Germany (near Bad Wimpfen) to Anna Magdalena (Burckhard) Bauer (1653-1695) widow of Hanß Christoph Bauer) in the neighboring village of Heinsheim. Johannes was a butcher by trade, as was his wife’s first husband. He may have taken over Hanß Christoph Bauer’s operation in Heinsheim after marrying his widow. Johannes and Anna Magdalena Heyd had a total of seven children, the first two of whom were born in Heinsheim and the last five in the neighboring village of Bonfeld, where they moved in 1682 or 1683. Anna Magdalena died 6 April 1695. Johannes remarried to Anna Maria Schultz, widow of Caspar Schultz and they had four children. In 1709, Johannes, Anna Maria, and their minor children departed Bonfeld for England in company with Johannes’s married son Jost and his family. Of Johannes’s household, Only Anna Maria (Jost’s stepmother) arrived in the American colonies alive in 1710. Johannes and the minor children died on the trip to England or soon after arrival. Son of Johannes by his first wife, Anna Magdalena -
Hans Justus Heyd (became Jost Hite in America) – born 5 December 1685, Bonfeld, Baden-Württemburg, Germany.
Although Jost Hite was born in the village of Bonfeld, that cannot really be cited as the village of origin of his Heyd ancestors because his father Johannes was born in Kirchheim am Neckar , a village about 27 kilometers south of Bonfeld. Johannes’s father, Georg Heyd, was clearly not a native of Kirchheim am Neckar since he and his wife Katharina had at least one child who was older than the ones born in that village. The first baptism of a child of theirs in the village occurred in 1652 – only four years after the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Numerous people in German-speaking areas relocated about that time. Georg Heyd’s place of origin remains unknown.
The area of Baden-Württemburg where this family lived was a part of Württemburg before the two states were merged after World War II.
Church in Heinsheim, where Jost Hite’s two older sisters were baptized in 1680 and 1683.
Church in Bonfeld, Baden-Württemburg, where Jost Hite
was baptized in 1685 and was married in 1704 to
Anna Maria Merckle (baptized there in 1687).
Childhood home of Jost Hite, Bonfeld.
Church in Kirchheim am Neckar, Baden-Württemburg, where Johannes Heyd (father of Jost Hite) was baptized in 1654.