



Produced by Roger Taft (RogerTaft at Cox.Net)







A U T O B I O G R A P H Y

O F

Z.  S.  H A S T I N G S



W R I T T E N   F O R    H I S    B O Y S

HARRY
PAUL
OTHO
MILO

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Effingham
Kan.

Christmas, 1911

Dear Paul,--

I am sending to each of the other boys a copy of my Autobiography
like this I send you.  I hope you will be interested in it;  read it,
preserve it, and give it to some of your children, to be read and
handed down and down until the second Adam comes the second time.

I am sure I would be glad to have something of this kind from my
father, even from his father's father's father's, etc., back to
father Adam, the first Adam.

Z. S. Hastings



C H A P T E R    O N E

Birth.  Name.  Parent's Religion.  Blood. Ancestor's
Religion and Politics.  First Recollection.  Father's
Family.  From North Carolina to Indiana

I was born March 15th 1838 at a place now called Williams in Lawrence
County, Indiana.  When the day came for me to be named, mother said,
"He looks like my brother Zachariah," but father said, "He looks like
my brother Simpson."  "All right", said mother," we will just
christen him Zachariah Simpson."  And that is my name unto this day.

Now, when mother said 'christen' she did not mean what is usually
meant by christening a babe, for if she had they would have had to
take me to a river, for mother and father both believed, when it came
to baptizing, that is required much water.  Mother, when baptized,
was dipped three times, face first, and father once, backwards making
in each case an entire submerging or an immersion.  Religiously mother
was called a Dunkard and father was called a Baptized Quaker.  "Now",
said father, one day to mother, "this out not to be, we are one in
Christ, let us be one in name."  "All right," said mother, "let us
drop the names Dunkard and Quaker and simply call ourselves Christians."
"Just so," said father, "but we must live Christians as well."  And
they did.

There runs in my veins both English and Irish blood.  On the paternal
side I can only trace my ancestors back to the early Quakers of
Baltimore.  On the maternal side I know less, for it is only said
that my great grand-mother was a handsome, witty, Irish-woman.  For
some reason, I know not what, I have always liked the humble, honest,
witty Irish people, be they Catholic or Protestant.

As far back as I can trace my ancestry they were religiously Quakers
and Politically Whigs.  More recently however, we are religiously,
simply Christians, politically prohibition Republicans.  I do not
boast of my ancestors, boys, for they were humble, yet,

     "Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
     'Tis only noble to be good."

The first thing that I can now remember was, when I was two and one-half
years old, in the fall of 1840, when General William Henry
Harrison was elected the ninth president of the United States.  It
was on the occasion of a big rally day for Mr. Harrison when I, with
my parents, stood by the road-side and saw in the great procession
going by, four men carrying a small log cabin upon their shoulders,
and in the open door of the cabin sat a small barrel of hard cider.
The rally cry was "Hurrah for Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

My father and mother were there, because they were Whigs, and I was
there because father and mother were there.  There is a great deal in
the way a child is brought up.  O, that the children of our beloved
land be brought up in the way they should go!  O, that it could be
said of all parents that their children are brought up in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord;  that is could be said of all teachers of
our great country as it was said of the great lexicographer, Noah
Webster:  "He taught thousands to read, but not one to sin."  It is
said boys, that the training of a child should begin a hundred years
before it is born.  I do not know about this, but I