DuBois-Hite Chapter

The DuBois-Hite Chapter, NSDAR, came into being April 21, 1936 at 702 E. Levee St. in Brownsville, Texas. Mrs. Harry C. Groom, the organizing regent, was a transfer from the Rio Grande Chapter in McAllen. She and her fellow officers were installed by Mrs. Thomas Malone, regent of the Rio Grande Chapter.

Mrs. Groom, a great, great, great granddaughter of the German Baron, Hans Joist Heydt, and his French Huguenot wife Anna Marie Dubois, was given the honor of naming the new chapter.

The romantic story of the wealthy Baron's meeting with his future bride began when the twenty year old nobleman fled from Strassburg where religious persecution had wiped out his entire family.

On his way to safety, he stopped at the castle of a friend expecting to rest his horses and spend the night. He was greeted at the door by a stranger, a Frenchman named DuBois, who warned him away saying the "Black Death" had already taken the lives of most of those in the castle. Joist Heydt then asked if he could help in any way, and the Frenchman said "yes", that his teenage daughter, Anna Marie, had not yet been exposed to the dread disease and could be saved if she could travel in the nobleman's carriage to her aunt's home in Holland.

On the journey, the young couple fell in love and were married in Amsterdam.

After some years, the very prosperous but restless Baron decided that he would take this family and a shipload of colonists to America where two of Anna Marie's uncles, Luis and Jacob DuBois, were already established. He purchased a fine ship and the journey began, this time with a baby daughter, a ship loaded with rich household goods, chests of gold, servants and relatives. They were accompanied by a chartered ship carrying colonists to the free world.

The Heydt family, now known as Hite, lived in Kingston, New York, and in Germantown, Pennsylvania, before settling in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. When it was first opened up for colonization, sixteen families came to the valley with the Baron and were probably the first white pioneers to settle there.

The Hite name is prominent in the history of Virginia and in the history of the Revolutionary War. Sixteen sons and grandsons of Joist and Anna Marie fought in the Revolution War; eleven of them were commissioned officers. A book, Long Meadows, written by Minnie Hite Moody, is the story of the Hite family from the early 1700's until after the Civil War. Long Meadows was the name of the estate the Baron gave his son, Isaac, and where Alma Marie died.

Three daughters and five sons were bam to Alma Marie and Joist. Mrs. Groom is a descendant of their second child, Elizabeth, who married Paul Froman of Pennsylvania.

The DuBois-Hite Chapter proudly bears the name of this illustrious colonial family.

At the time of organization, our motto was "The Past is Our Foundation for the Future". It is now "Rose and Country".

Our flower is the red rose and colors are blue and white.