Jacob Hite
Jacob Hite (1717-1778) was one of the wealthiest men in Berkeley County, West Virginia. Hite had come to the Valley with his father in the early 1730s. A prominent family, Hite had served as sheriff twice for Frederick County and also as justice of the peace for that county as well as Berkeley. His son, Thomas, was a member of the House of Burgesses. Hite is most famous for his assault on the Martinsburg county jail in April 1774 and his rivalry with Adam Stephen.
He was the son of a highly successful Shenandoah Valley land speculator, Jost Hite, a German immigrant, and Anna Maria (née Merckle). His sister, Mary Magdalena Hite, is an ancestor to Major League Baseball pitcher Tug McGraw and country music star Tim McGraw.
In the late 1760s, Hite and his business partner, Richard Pearis, created a scheme to obtain a large tract of land from Cherokee Indians, using Pearis' son, George, who was half-Cherokee, as a pawn. Cherokee headmen viewed men like George Pearis as useful diplomatic bridges to the British. George obtained a 150,000-acre (610 km2) tract of land just west of South Carolina from the headmen. He then sold it to his father and Hite. Though the scheme was clever, a British official feared it may provoke the Cherokees to join an anti-British confederation Indian diplomats were forming at the time. The official persuaded a South Carolina court to void the deal.
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