A Revolutionary Soldier, founder of Columbia, Hamilton County, Ohio on November 28, 1788.

"On the 16th of November, 1788, Maj. Stites with a party of twenty-six persons, including four women and two boys, embarked at Maysville, ... They landed a little after sunrise, on the morning of November 18, somewhat below the mouth of the Little Miami" river. From the HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, CHAPTER V.
CINCINNATI, PAST AND PRESENT.

[A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH, BY W. H. VENABLE, LL.D.]

SON of Benjamin Stites and Rachel Kitchell
HUSBAND of Rachel Muchmore (some say Waldron), Hannah Waring and partner of Mary Mills
FATHER of children with Rachel
John, Phebe, Richard, Benjamin and Rachel
FATHER of children with Hannah
Richard, William, Nathaniel and Benjamin
FATHER of children with Mary
John Ganos and Mary R.
There might be an overlap in names.

Benjamin was born in 1746 -- not 1734, in Scotch Plains, Essex County (now Union County), New Jersey. Soon after he married Rachel in 1768, they moved to the SW corner of Pennsylvania. He bought land on Bates Fork of Tenmile (~54 miles SSW of Pittsburgh), where he was living when he served as tax collector for Morgan Township in 1784. He convinced John C. Symmes to buy many thousands of acres of land on the Miami River of Ohio. He bought 20,000 acres of Symmes' land by the mouth of the Little Miami River. There he established Columbia in 1788. Today Columbia is a neighborhood in eastern Cincinnati. Benjamin Stites is recognized as a founder of Cincinnati. His brothers Elijah and Hezekiah accompanied him from Pennsylvania to Ohio and helped purchase the land and settle the area, along with two dozen others.

Benjamin's sister Rachel married Stephen Woodruff. They lived close to her three brothers, Benjamin, Hezekiah and Elijah, in southwestern Pennsylvania. She died there in 1794. Stephen Woodruff moved to Cincinnati, traveling with some Stites family members.

Benjamin's marital woes with his first wife, Rachel, ended in divorce. She remarried in 1805 to Joseph Ward. His second marriage to Mary Mills was invalidated because he had not terminated his marriage with Rachel, although they separated in 1786 while in Pennsylvania. Mary later married a Mr. Woodruff. His third marriage with Hannah lasted to his death in 1804.
* * * * *
History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches
By Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., Publication date: 1881, Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams, Page 39

Among those who had been attracted by a visit to the Miami country was one Captain (or Major) Benjamin Stites, of. Redstone, Old Fort, now Brownsville, Pennsylvania, who was the prime mover in the inception of the Miami Purchase. Stites is, indeed, the real hero of the Purchase, as regards the original conception of it. He was, like many of the first colonists in the tract, a native of New Jersey, born at Scotch Plains, Essex County. While still young he emigrated to western Pennsylvania and settled on Ten Mile creek, in the present county of Green. Here he became a captain in the militia, and took an active part in the frontier struggles with the Indians. In the spring of 1787, he descended the Ohio from Redstone with a trading venture, in the shape of a flat-boat loaded with flour, whiskey, and other wares adapted to the river market of that day, and floated down to Limestone, or Limestone Point, now Maysville, Kentucky. Here his sales had small success, and he pushed with his goods into the interior at Washington, a few miles back, where he had better fortune. While here the Indians came upon a marauding expedition into the neighborhood, and ran off some horses, taking other property with them. Stites was a man of great strength and courage, and accustomed to Indian warfare. He at once volunteered to go with a party in pursuit. It was speedily raised, and he hastened with it across the country on the Indian trail until the river was reached, below where Augusta now stands, when they kept the Kentucky shore down to a point opposite the mouth of the Little Miami. Here it was ascertained that the red robbers had made a raft and crossed with their booty, evidently striking for their towns in the Miami country. The whites likewise made a raft, crossed themselves and their horses, and pursued the enemy to the vicinity of Old Chillicothe, a few miles north of Xenia, near the headwaters of the Little Miami, which it was deemed prudent not to approach closely, and the expedition retraced its steps. The return through the valley was made more leisurely, and Stites had the better opportunity to observe its beauty and fertility. Before recrossing the Ohio, he had decided to come back to the valley with a colony, and make a permanent settlement. The idea of the Miami Purchase, in its rude outlines at least, was born in his sagacious mind. He closed his business at Washington as soon as possible and returned to his family. Sometime afterwards he went to New Jersey for means with which to accomplish his intents; and there, at Trenton, met him whose name was to be forever more conspicuously identified with the memory of the Purchase than his, the active agent in the prosecution and consummation of the enterprise — Judge John Cleves Symes.
Contributor: Mel Davis (49103460)