My father (John Irving Hastings) was born in Blandford, December 30th, 1840. Uncle Horace L. Hastings, his brother, was born November 26, 1831, and I think also born in Blandford, Massachusetts. Their father, King Solomon Hastings, was a farmer and minister. They had a small sawmill on Blandford Brook and H..L. was running it and studying for the ministry at the same time. One day he forgot the saw and it fed into one of the iron dogs and about ruined the saw.
I came back to Massachusetts in 1897 to serve time with the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company at Pittsfield in their shops and testing rooms. They built everything used in a power house generating electric power. I was to serve three years there and then be made an erecting engineer and put on the road to repair and install their apparatus in power plants. When I had been with them some eighteen months I was sent to New York, Pennsylvania, South Canada, and a California plant on Mokelumne River. I was a foreman. We brought the water ninety miles, transmitted power one hundred fifty miles, nine sub-stations in as many different California cities. I had served my time as a machinist for several years. I afterwards was sent to Panama Canal and was Master Mechanic of one of the large power plants. Then, after an examination, I became the first inspector appointed to watch the erection of the forty lock gates at Gatun. I was on the Canal work nearly four years. My wife was with me and my son, John I. Hastings, was born there.
Father served his time with the Gridley brothers in Blandford. I think there were three of them. Joseph Gridley and Mrs. Julius Bedortha (Bodurtha) are buried in the Russell Center Cemetery.
The Gridley brothers left Blandford and went out West to the Western Reserve, now Ohio. They settled at Franklin Mills, now Kent, in Portage County. In 1857, when father was seventeen years old, they wrote him that if he would come out to them, they could give him plenty of work. So, as his father had died, he decided to go West. His only brother, Horace L. Hastings, felt so badly that his younger brother was going way out West that he went back in the house and wrote the song, "Shall we meet beyond the river?" Later this was used by Dwight L. Moody and Sankey when they and H.L. Hasting went up and down in England, Scotland, and Wales holding revival services.
H.L. Hastings published the "Christian" and the "Little Christian" in Boston at 47 Cornhill Street for forty years. He started a Bible school at Goshen Massachusetts. The building there at Goshen Center, called the Whale Inn, was his library. He lived there and also at the Hawks place, which I owned at one time. H.L. Hastings had two sons, Horatius B. Hastings and John King Hastings, and a daughter, Hattie May. She lived in Goshen for years and died there maybe a year ago. I was at Uncle Horace's funeral in Goshen. Sankey was ill and could not come.. A year later, Sankey had become blind but came up to Goshen and held a memorial service for his friend, H.L. Hastings. Both of H.L.'s sons are now dead. They had a wonderful collection of old Bibles at the Goshen home years ago; some with board covers; some had been chained to their pulpits; some had been worked on by monks doing the lettering by hand. Capitals in colors, beautiful work.
My father was living in Kent (Ohio) when the Civil War started. He had become well acquainted with James A. Garfield (later President), who had been made president of Hiram College, twenty-two miles northwest of Kent. Garfield and Father were big strong fellows, fond of sports. The old town hall in Kent was the only place where the young fellows could have some clean recreation. Garfield, whom Father always called "Jim", would come down Saturday evenings and a small group would box and wrestle in this building. It still stands there in good condition. One evening a group of Kent men brought a big fellow in to box with Garfield. It was supposed to be all good natured sport, but this fellow got rough and Garfield had to put him to sleep to save himself. Garfield was a Carmelite minister, (I think they are called Disciples now) and preached Sunday mornings in the same town hall. His congregation heard of the boxing match the evening before and so suspended him for engaging in "fisticuffs". It always tickled Father.
One day Garfield led a group of Hiram College men down Mantua Street, Kent, Ohio and Father joined them there and went on to War. It was later call Company A of 42 Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He later transferred to Grant's Engineers.
We were down in Silver City, New Mexico where Father was manager of a large silver mine when word came of Garfield being shot. It was the only time I ever saw Father cry.
Garfield appointed Father Deputy U.S. Mineral Surveyor for the Territory of New Mexico. A boy who had left school when nine years old in Blandford, Massachusetts!
My father and his brother, Rev. Horace L. Hastings, had one sister, Mary, a graduate of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was sent as a missionary by the Methodist Churches to Old Mexico. Her first Protestant school was a chicken house which she cleaned out. Roman Catholics had full control of Mexico at that time and wanted no "Prorotentoes" in the country. Her school prospered and years afterwards she built a fine three story brick, stone trimmed school where the daughters of the finest families in Mexico and the daughters of some of her former pupils attended, some six hundred students. She was getting ready to come north to see us when she was taken seriously ill. She died in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico after twenty-five years of fine Christian labor for the Master. The governor of the State of Hidalgo sent members of his cabinet to her funeral and her casket was draped with the national colors. I think she was born in Blandford.
My sister, Bertha, the oldest of my parents family, daughter of John I. Hastings and Charlotte Mary Blake Hastings, studied for a physician and surgeon at Women's Medical College, Philadelphia. She expected to go to a foreign field but was rejected for some reason. She went before the Surgeon's Board and asked where the greatest need for a good doctor and surgeon was at the time. They said Oklahoma, which had just opened for settlement. There were no roads or bridges and people were very poor. They plowed fields and piled sod from them for walls of houses. There was a terrible amount of malaria. She would find a whole family sick in bed and would cook a meal and get things straight as best as she could. She rode three thousand miles the first year; killed herself by overwork. (died 5/12/1911)
My brother James' oldest daughter, Anna L. Hastings, was a graduate of Oklahoma A.&.M. and was sent into Brazil as a church missionary about twenty-two years ago. She is still there doing her Lord's work.
(Note: The above manuscript was probably sent to me around 1925) DWH 1952
Additional Information: -
King Solomon Hastings, son of Rev. John & Rachel (King) Hastings (Rev. John-Rev. Joseph - Benjamin - Thomas) tidss
b. 7/11/1805 in Blandford, Mass. m. Peggy A. Hamilton - 2/12/1829 by Ebert Osborn, minister of the gospel
d. 1/24/1854 buried in Blandford (probably in the Hastings Cemetery on Sperry Rd.)
Children: -
Hezekiah - (1830)
d. 9/13/1833-3 yrs. bur. Hastings Cemetery
Horace L. 11/26/1831
m. Harriet Barnett -
in Boston 10/12/1853
Irvin - 10/1837
d. 3/29/1839-17 mo. bur. Hastings Cemetery
John Irving - 12/30/1840
1. m. Charlotte Mary Blake in Brimfield, Ohio 10/28/1861
2. m. Sarah Sullivan in Stillwater, Ohio 7/23/1897
Hiram Armor - 8/8/1843 d. 5/28/1849 - drowned bur. Hastings Cemetery
Mary - birth date not known
d. Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico
Wife:
Margaret Almona Hamilton,, daughter of Armor & Nancy (Knox) Hamilton
b. 12/13/1800 - Blandford, Mass. d. 3.22.1867 Lawrence, Mass. - 66 yrs., 3 mo., 9 days
bur. Blandford, (probably Hastings Cemetery)
This family lived on Sperry Road in Blandford. King Solomon Hastings was a local preacher. It is not certain whether he was a Baptist or Methodist. Earlier members of his line were Baptists.
From Stone Walls Magazine, Fall, 1989