Joseph S. Gitt

Joseph S. Gitt (September 9, 1815 – January 22, 1901) was a self-taught civil engineer, surveyor and politician from Pennsylvania. After an unsuccessful career as a newspaper publisher, Gitt went back into railroading, estimating that in his career, he had conducted 31 different railroad surveys for a total distance of over 300 miles in his career Gitt either surveyed or engineered most of the railroads constructed in Frederick and Carroll county, Maryland and Adams county, Pennsylvania in the 1855-1885 period with the exception of the civil war.

Joseph S Gitt was born on September 9, 1815, the oldest of the eleven children of Daniel and Lydia Gitt in Conowago township, Adams County, Pennsylvania. He studied at Gettysburg college (1835–36) receiving a degree of Fellow of Philosophy. He married on March 31, 1841, to Miss Anna M Baughman, daughter of David Baughman, of Hanover, Pennsylvania. They had four children, one of whom Maria Louisa Gitt, married William Smyser of Topeka, Kansas.

Gitt was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In politics, he was a democrat in his youth (See newspapers above) and later a republican, as well as a prohibitionist and a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

In 1862, Gitt was nominated by the Union party ticket for county surveyor. In 1895, Gitt was nominated by the local Prohibitionist party to run as county surveyor for Adams county, Pennsylvania.

On January 22, 1901, Gitt died in New Oxford Borough, Adams County, Pennsylvania and was buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Hanover with the rites of the Odd Fellows. Five years after his death, Gitt was eulogized in the same paper as a man of means and a civil engineer of some repute who was willing to fore-go his work at any time to offer gratuitous support for public education for as the editor put it.. "if there was one thing Joseph Gitt loved above all else, it was to write for the papers."

After being employed as a surveyor on earlier railroads, in 1851, Gitt became Assistant Engineer for the construction of the Hanover Branch railroad (later, consolidated under the name of Hanover Junction, Hanover & Gettysburg Railroad). Upon its completion in November, 1854 Gitt became Chief engineer for the Philadelphia and West Chester railroad. Gitt was Engineer (of Record) for the Gettysburg railroad from 1855 to its opening on February 11, 1856. He then became chief engineer for the Littlestown railroad, a railroad from Hanover to New Oxford in Pennsylvania which opened on January 6, 1858.

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