Robert Franklin Litaker was born on August 24, 1893 in Concord, North Carolina. Litaker was a bookkeeper for the Ritchie Hardware Company and later was a prominent clerk and administrator for the Southern Railway. In July 1919, he served as secretary of a newly organized lodge that was defrauded by the itinerant scammer Texas Ritchie. Litaker died in Alexandria, Virginia on August 31, 1963.