Robert Roberts Hitt (January 16, 1834 – September 20, 1906) was an Assistant Secretary of State and later a member of the United States House of Representatives. He was born in Urbana, Ohio, to Reverend Thomas Smith Hitt and Emily John Hitt. He and his parents moved to Mount Morris, Illinois in 1837. There he was educated at Rock River Seminary and later at De Pauw University. An expert shorthand writer (one of few men of his time who represented that skill), he became a very close friend of future President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and during the famous Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858, at the request of Lincoln, Hitt served as a shorthand note-taker. Lincoln's legal days in Chicago is when he had first employed Hitt.