Hiteshew

The current focal ancestor for this wiki's Hiteshew line is Daniel Hiteshew, born in 1804 in Frederick County, MD. Daniel Hiteshew's ancestry is not confirmed, but a probable line back to immigrant Jacob Hiteshew (Heidschuh) is desbribed below.

Names and Records

In early records we find many variant spellings for the surname that became standardized as Hiteshew in the family line leading to William T. Hiteshew. The variants include Heidschuh, Heidschu, Heidshuh, Heidshu, Heitschuh, Heitschu, Hideshew, Hitechew, Hightshoe, Highshoe, and Heytshoe – as well as what might better be characterized as mishearings (e.g. Hitchen). Early church records in particular tend more toward Germanic spelling, while civil records tend more towards Anglicized spelling. This wiki will use the Hiteshew spelling by default, but may use other spellings when referring to records and documents.

In a practice that continued for several generations, what we call the middle name was often the name a person went by in social interactions. However, prevailing laws and customs established during the colonial period often dictated that the first name be used or included for certain kinds of documents.

Family Origins

The earliest known probable ancestor for this wiki's Hiteshew section is Jacob Heidschuh, probably born sometime between 1690 and 1710, who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1728.

In the 1700s, many German-speaking immigrants came to the area in Pennsylvania that is now Berks County, and that is where records show Johann Nicolaus Hiteshew, presumed son of immigrant Jacob, acquiring land in 1752. This is part of a pattern indicating that Jacob Hiteshew was part of the Palatine Migration. As individual biographies will show, Jacob and his early descendants lived in communities that included many Palatine German immigrants and their descendants. They also were active in the Evangelical Lutheran and German Reformed congregations formed in the 1700s by German-speaking immigrants from Protestant areas of Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, and France.

Family Tree

Tracing the Tree

By Catherine R. Marshall, last updated October 2024

In tracing Hiteshew ancestry, I began by working backwards from my great grandfather, William T. Hiteshew. His death certificate (available from the Ohio Department of Health) shows Maryland as his birthplace, and also the birthplace of his parents, who are listed as “Jas Hiteshew” and “Virginia Grey.” A variety of other records provide confirmation that “Jas Hiteshew” was James M. Hiteshew, born 29.Jan.1838 in Maryland.

The next steps back rely heavily on biographical information from the book History of Frederick County Maryland, first published in 1910, which states that Daniel Hiteshew and Susan Grinder were the parents of a James M. Hiteshew of Cumberland (Maryland) who was in the Second Maryland Home Brigade (Union Army) during the Civil War. That book also states that Daniel Hiteshew was born in 1804 in Frederick County (Maryland), and that his father was George Hiteshew, farmer and native of Frederick County. Finally, the book notes that George Hiteshew also was the father of sons George and Jacob, both of whom served in the War of 1812.

At this point, tracing ancestry further back became more difficult. I could find no birth, baptism or death records for Daniel Hiteshew, so I turned to Federal Census records for 1800 and 1810 hoping to find Daniel's father. While sites like Ancestry.com provide a way to search such records for names, that method only works if a recognizable version of the name was originally recorded and then correctly transcribed. In fact, there are a lot of errors, so it sometimes becomes necessary to pore over digital images of the original, handwritten (and sometimes faded or stained) census records. Having done this, I can report with confidence that no name resembling George Hiteshew can be found in the 1790, 1800 or 1810 census records for Frederick County, Maryland. In all three census years, however, there were households listed for a Phillip or P Hiteshew. Some of the census records are organized by township, and these have Phillip Hiteshew in the Taney district, which is the area around Taneytown. Knowing this, we can find dots possibly connecting this Phillip Hiteshew to Daniel Hiteshew by jumping further back into the past and then working forward.

In making the jump to the past, it helps to know that the area around Taneytown in Frederick County, Maryland was heavily populated by German-speaking settlers who came from Pennsylvania. It also helps to know that during the 1700s, Philadelphia was a main port of entry for German-speaking immigrants, many of whom initially moved into what became Berks and Lancaster counties, and then continued to migrate south and west.

Thanks to researchers who have compiled detailed records, we learn that a Jacob Heidshuh was one of 80 adult men who came to Philadelphia in 1728 on a ship that described its passengers as “Palatine Migrants.” Since the ship also carried women and children, whose names were not recorded, Jacob may have been accompanied by wife and children. The name Heidshuh was uncommon and there are no records of other immigrants in that time period with variants of that name. It seems reasonable to assume, then, that immigrant Jacob Heidshuh is the same Jacob Hiteshew who in 1734 purchased 100 acres of land west of Philadelphia, probably near what is now the town of Skippack. It also seems reasonable to assume that three men with surname Hiteshew, whom records from the 1750s place a bit further west in what is now Berks County, were related to immigrant Jacob Hiteshew. These three men were Johann Nicolaus Hiteshew and Jacob Hiteshew, sons of Jacob, and Jürg Phillip Hiteshew, who may have been Jacob's brother.

From church records in Berks County, we learn that Jürg Phillip Heidshuh was a baptism sponsor in 1756 for a child given the same name by parents Johann Nicolaus Heidshuh and his wife Anna Sybilla. The name of this child would have been Angelicized as George Phillip Hiteshew, and in keeping with family custom he may have gone by the name Phillip. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this George Phillip Hiteshew, born in 1756, is the Phillip Hiteshew who appears in the 1790 census record for Frederick County, Maryland – and is also the George referred to as the father of Daniel Hiteshew in the 1910 book.

When exploring the line from immigrant Jacob Hiteshew to William Thomas Hiteshew presented below, keep in mind that links from Daniel Hiteshew back to to George Phillip Hiteshew and then to Johann Nicolaus Hiteshew are speculative. The circumstantial evidence seems compelling, but the theory may be wrong.

Line from Jacob Hiteshew to William Thomas Hiteshew

Jacob Heidschuh (b. ~1690) + Anna Maria (surname unknown)