Jefferson County, West Virginia Biography of Rolfe Millar HITE This biography was submitted by Sue Schell, E-mail address: The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, Pg. 397 & 398 BIO: Rolfe Millar Hite, Jefferson Co., WV Rolfe Millar Hite. Considering the extent of his individual interests and the great properties and holdings in which he has acted as an operator, administrator or negotiator, Rolfe Millar Hite stands in the front rank of leaders in the coal industry in the northern section of West Virginia. His career is a long and notable one in many respects. He was born July 16, 1867, at Hite in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania. However, he is descended from a long and prominent line of West Virginia ancestors. His American forefather was Yost Hite, who has the historic distinction of being the first white man to make permanent settlement in old Frederick County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, now Jefferson County, West Virginia. Yost Hite came from Strasburg, Germany, to America, and first located in the Dutch Colony on the Hudson River at Kingston, New York in 1710. He brought with him his wife and daughter. In 1717 he removed to what is now Germantown, Pennsylvania, and settled on his own land at that point. Later he exchanged this land for a large tract of land on the Schuylkill River at the mouth of what is known as Perkiomen Creek. There he built a substantial residence, also a mill, and it remained his home for several succeeding years. In the meantime he learned of the newly discovered country in the Virginia Colony. Being by nature a pioneer, he made investigations and in that year secured from Governor Penn of the Pennsylvania Colony what Hite thought was a grant from the Virginia governor and council for a large land grant in the new country. In 1732, accompanied by his family and twenty other families of colonists, he entered the forests of what is now Jefferson County, at that time occupied by Indians only. The validity of his grant was later questioned and for a time he was in danger of losing his land, but being conversant with the laws on grants and somewhat of a lawyer himself he eventually established his rights, settled on his land and spent the rest of his life there. The oldest son of Yost Hite was Col. John Hite, a native of Kingston, New York, who accompanied his parents into Pennsylvania and Virginia, and became one of the prominent men of his locality. Old records show that he was surveyor in 1747, justice in 1748, assemblymen in 1752, 1772, 1780 and captain on court martial in 1755, major on court martial, 1756, lieutenant-colonel on court martial, 1757, and colonel and president of court martial 1760. On different occasions he entertained as a guest of his home "Surveyor Washington," "Colonel Washington," both titles being for the later distinguished General and President George Washington. However, the direct ancestor of Rolfe Millar Hite was the second son of Yost Hite, Jacob, who was born in Pennsylvania. On going to Virginia he chose for his homestead a large tract of land from the grant of his father, situated in the northern part of Frederick County, near what is now Martinsburg, West Virginia. In order to secure competent settlers for the development of this land he visited Ireland and brought back with him a number of Scotch-Irish families. On the return voyage he met Catherine O’Bannon, whom he later made his wife. She lived only a few years after her marriage, and was survived by three sons: Captain John, Colonel Thomas and Jacob Hite, all of whom became distinguished men of their time. The second wife of Jacob Hite was Mrs. France (Madison) Beale, daughter of Ambrose Madison and a direct descendant of the founder of the Madison family in Gloucester County, Virginia, in 1653, from whom by another line was descended President James Madison. Thomas Hite, son of Jacob and Frances (Madison) Hite, was born in 1750, in what is now Jefferson County, West Virginia, and became a prosperous man of affairs. Besides local offices he served as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1772 he married Frances Beale. James Hite, a son of Thomas and Frances (Beale) Hite, was born in Jefferson County in 1776 and died at the old Hite homestead in 1855. He was three times married. His son Col. James Hite by his second wife married Lydia Peterson, daughter of Henry Peterson, who married a daughter of Robert Morris, the distinguished Philadelphia Revolutionary financier. Henry Peterson’s brother Louis made the first piece of copper pipe manufactured west of the Allegheny Mountains. Peter Yost Hite, son of Col. James and his wife Lydia, was born on the old homestead in Jefferson county in 1832 and died August 21, 1911. He married Susan Rebecca Richardson, who was born in Warren County, Virginia, in 1831, and died November 2, 1884. She was a daughter of Marcus Calmes and Harriet Lydia (Christman) Richardson. To Peter Yost and Rebecca Hite were born the following children: (I) James (who died in infancy), (II) Samuel R., (III) Hattie Lydia, (IV) Marcus Calmes, (V) Lizzie Isabell, (VI) Rolfe Millar (subject of this sketch), (VII) Mary Virginia, (VIII) John Yost and (IX) Susan Rebecca. Peter Y. Hite attended Virginia Military Institute, and as a young man in 1852 left that state and went to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, where for several years he followed different lines of employment. In 1855 he entered actively the coal mining industry, and was also a manufacturer of salt at Hite in Allegheny County. His interests remained there from 1855 to 1887. During the following year he was a coal producer in Athens County, Ohio, and in 1889 returned to his native State of Virginia. In 1891 he established himself at Fairmont, West Virginia, where he had purchased a coal property as early as 1865, a property now operated by his sons. He was associated with his sons in the coal and coke business here. Rolfe M. Hite grew up at Hite, Pennsylvania, attended public schools there and later the Newell Institute at Pittsburgh. Owing to the fact that he entered upon his business career at the age of eighteen his schooling was limited from the standpoint of time, though the fundamental training he acquired in his youth has been supplemented from year to year by constant reading and by first-hand knowledge of men and affairs. Mr. Hite’s active career in the coal industry began in 1885, when he engaged in mining and supplying coal to the town of Tarentum, Pennsylvania. In 1888 he was associated with his father as P. Y. Hite Sons Company in coal operating in Athens County, Ohio. In 1889 he removed to Tazewell County, Virginia, at a time when the Clinch Valley extension of the Norfolk & Western Railroad was being built from Tazewell Court House to Norton, connecting the latter point with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. In that field Mr. Hite represented the interests of T. P. Trigg & Company, a subsidiary of the Tennessee Coal Iron and Railroad company, a corporation then developing a vast tract of coal lands along the new line of railroad in Dickerson and Wise counties, Virginia. Mr. Hite had active charge of this mine development and still later, acting for the same company, was in the Kentucky coal fields. Mr. Hite in 1890 organized the Virginia & Pittsburgh Coal & Coke Company, and the following year he located permanently at Fairmont, the center of his new interests. The company, in which his father and brothers were also interested, developed the Kingmont Mine and later the Morgan Mine at Rivesville in Marion county. In 1905 R. M. Hite with his brother J. Yost Hite and associates organized the Potomac Valley Coal Company, operating mines in Maryland, near Blaine, West Virginia. In 1920, in company with Mr. Glenn F. Barnes, was organized the Hite-Barnes Coal Company, operating the Eleanor Mine on Indian Creek in Monogalia County. From time to time during the last twenty years Mr. Hite’s holdings in the above mines, especially the Morgan, have been increased by the purchase of coal lands, until his personal, together with his company’s interests, have become recognized as some of the largest holdings of coal land in Northern West Virginia. Besides being an operator he has been a buyer and seller and handler of acreage, and in that direction has been a factor in some extensive transactions. A notable instance was the sale of what was known as the Empire field of Pittsburgh coal to an eastern corporation in 1917. Mr. Hite and Samuel D. Brady handled this transaction, involving the sale of 10,000 acres of coal land for a cash payment of over $3,700,000 to the New England Fuel & Transportation Company of Boston. Another episode in Mr. Hite’s career was the part he had in settling up the properties of Josiah V. Thompson, the millionaire of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, who failed in business in 1915, with holdings aggregating a value of $65,000,000, and liabilities of $32,000,000. The Common Pleas Court of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1915, appointed Mr. Hite one of the three appraisers of this vast property. Later the Federal Court of Pittsburgh and of West Virginia appointed him, together with David M. Hertzog and George R. Scrugham, of Uniontown, appraisers of the property, the largest group of assets, comprising 143,000 acres of Pittsburgh coal in Pennsylvania and West Virginia appointed him trustee for the West Virginia creditors, whose interests approximated $5,000,000. The Thompson affairs were ultimately settled to the satisfaction of all concerned, Mr. Hite and his associates receiving the commendation of the court for the business-like and thoroughly honorable methods they had employed in handling the matter. At this writing Mr. Hite is president of the Virginia & Pittsburgh Coal & Coke Company, president of the Hite-Barnes Coal & Coke Company, president of the Lucille Coal Company, president of the Potomac Coal & Coke Company, and manager of the Montfair Gas coal Company. He is a member of the Fairmont chamber of Commerce, member of the State Advisory Board of the Old Colony Club, and is active in the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Fairmont. In 1898 he married Miss Jennie Hunsaker, a native of West Virginia, and who died four months after their marriage. In 1900 Mr. Hite married Miss Louise May West, a native of Harrison County, West Virginia, and daughter of Felix and Gula West. Her father was a confederate soldier and after the war, a prosperous farmer in Harrison County. Mr. and Mrs. Hite have four children, Louise Virginia, Lucille Mildred, Helen Ruth, and Eleanor May. Louise is the wife of Lieut. Harry K, Granger, who was in the aviation service overseas twenty-six months, and who is now associated with his father and brothers in the wholesale grocery business, as Granger Brothers, at Lincoln, Nebraska.