Excerpt from The Biographical and Genealogical Records of the Fite Families in the United States: Including Sketches of the Following Families: Armstrong, Coldwell, Donnell, Levering, Mervine, Mitchell, Newton, Northcott, Odell, Randolph, Robertson, Shepherd, Stephenson, Tabb

The beginning of these records was made many years ago, when a great grandmother, at the ripe age of one hundred and more years, used to tell to the little great-grandson at her knee the story of the Revolution as she knew it. She told him of the sweetheart who marched away to fight; who promised to come back and marry her when the war was at an end; then would come the oft repeated questio'n And did he, Granny? - and the oft repeated answer Yes, he did; and I was the girl, and your great grandfather was the soldier. This episode of her girlhood oc curred in New Jersey, far from the Tennessee home where the little lad lived and where Granny rounded out her well-spent days.

Granny also told the little lad of his great-great-grandparents, Johannes and Catharine: how they had eloped and come to America from Germany because they knew they would never gain the consent of Catharine's parents to her marriage; Catharine was supposed to have been of noble birth. Told of the voyage over, of the ship with their goods not reaching port; how they spent all they had to sustain them on the long voyage, so that when they reached these shores they went to live with a millwright in Philadelphia, and Johannes learned the trade. All of this and much more besides she told the child, and when a few years later, after her death, he went to visit his grandparents, his grandmother continued the story of his ancestors, beginning where Granny Fite had left oe. She bade him take pencil and paper and take notes of what she said. This he did, and this paper, written in the boyish hand, is still preserved, and its contents formed the basis for this book.

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