



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 do know that the
proper training should be kept up after it is born.  Will you see to
it, that you do your part well?

My father's family consisted of seven children, of whom I was the
fifth child.  Three brothers, Joshua Thomas, William Henry and John
Arthur, and one sister, Nancy Elizabeth, were older than I.  One
sister Charlotte Ann, and one brother Rufus Wiley, were younger.  My
father's name was Howell Hastings, my mother's name was Edith
Edwards.  Father and mother were both born in North Carolina; father
in 1905, mother in 1808.  They were married in 1826.  My two older
brothers were born in North Carolina.  The rest of us were born in
Indiana.  The parents, with their two little boys came to Indiana in
1830.  They made the entire trip in a one-horse wagon; crossing the
Cumberland Mountains, and passing through the states of Tennessee,
Virginia and Kentucky.  Of course they had but little in their wagon;
a box or two containing their wearing apparel, and a little bedding,
and also a little tin box containing just one-hundred dollars in gold
coin and a few valuable papers, which was kept, locked and hidden, in
one of the larger boxes.  This hundred dollars was all the money
father had except what he had in his pocket purse, which he supposed
would be enough to meet the expenses of the trip.

All went well for about two weeks when a man, traveling on horseback,
overtook them, who slackened his gait and traveled along with
them, forming an acquaintance.  He said to them that he too, was
going to the far west (Indiana was called the far west then), to seek
his fortune.  He was very kind, helpful and generous; and traveled
along with them for two days, but, on the third day morning, when
father awoke, his fellow traveler was gone.  Father and the man had
slept under the wagon.  Father usually slept in or under the wagon
while mother and the little boys would sleep in the house of some
family who lived by the road-side.  Just as they were ready to start
that morning, mother said to father, "Have you looked to see if the
tin box is safe?"  "No" said father.  "Well, you better look," said
mother.  Father looked among the stuff in the big box where they had
kept it, but it was not there.  The man had stolen it and all that
was in it.  The kind family, whose hospitality mother had shared
during the night, kept her and her children in their home while
father and the husband of the home and an officer of the law spent
two days hunting for the thief, but could not find him.  So, father
and mother had to pursue their journey without their little tin box
which was the most valuable of their temporal assets.  A man that
steals, should steal no more.

In due time, (1830) father and mother with their two little boys,
Thomas and Henry arrived in Lawrence County, Indiana, and settled in
the rich valley of the east fork of the White river.  Father's oldest
brother, Arthur D. Hastings, Sen., had preceded father a few years to
the new state, and was ready to greet and assist his brother to make
a new home.  Uncle Arthur was one of God's noblemen, an honest,
leading citizen, and devout Christian.  He lived on the place he
first settled about sixty years, and died there in 1886 at the
advanced age of 85 years.  Although I had many uncles, Uncle Arthur
was the only one I ever saw.

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C H A P T E R    T W O

Indiana.  The Stars fall.  Move.  Texas.   The flood of
1844.  First School.  White River's Pocket.  No
Nimrod.  A Fish Story.  Clarksburg.

At the time of father's arrival, Indiana was only 14 years old and
contained about 300,000 inhabitants.  Its capital city's first Mayor
was inaugurated two years before I was born and three years after the
stars fell.

In 1842 when I was about four years old my parents sold out and moved
down the river five or six miles and bought a new, larger and better
farm with a large two story hewed log house and a big double log
barn, and a good apple orchard.  The farming land was bottom and lay
along the river.  Here we had some sheep and cattle on a few hills
and some hogs in the woods, that got fat in the winter on white oak
acorns and beech nuts.  And here we had a large "sugar orchard" as
the Hosiers called it--hard maple trees by the many from which, in
the early spring, flowed the sweet sap by the barrels full which we
converted into gallons of maple syrup, and into many cakes of maple
sugar.

It was while we lived here, when I was six years old, there was the
greatest flood, known to me, since the days of Noah.  I remember it
well.  You too, my boys, will never forget the year when I tell you
it was the same year, 1844, in which your best earthly friend was
born, your mother.  But I did not know anything about her until
twenty years afterwards.

The flood was great.  All the lower lands were under water.  Mr.
Greene's, the ferryman, our nearest neighbor's family had to go in a
canoe from the door of their kitchen to their smoke house to get
meat.  All our cattle and hogs were in the stalk fields near the
river, and all were drowned, except one large, strong cow which swam
more than one half mile, almost in a straight line, and was saved.
We could see the cattle huddled together on a small island knoll away
down in the field next to the river.  The poor creatures would stand
there until the rapidly rising waters would crowd them off the knoll,
and then they swam until exhausted and overcome by the great
distance, and turbulent waters when they would go down to rise no
more.  I was the first to see the cow which swam out.  Looking down
through the orchard where the waters were swimming deep, I saw the
end of her nose and the tips of her horns above the water.  Slowly
she came, almost exhausted.  But finally she found footing where she
could stand and then the poor creature stood and bawled and bawled
for quite a while, and then walked to her young calf which was at the
barn on the hillside.

About this time I attended my first school and my teacher was my
cousin, Arthur D. Hastings, Jr., who lived to a good old age, and
died September 15th, 1906 within a little more than a stone's cast of
where he taught.  My first and only textbook at school for a year or
more was Webster's blue back Spelling book.  It had both Spelling and
Reading in it.  I learned all from end to end.  The teacher said I
ought to have a reader, so farther bought for me, McGuffey's second
reader; as soon as I got hold of it I ran with it to the barn loft
and sat down on the hay and read all that was in it before I got up.
The next day the teacher said I ought to have a higher reader, so
father bought for me McGuffey's fourth reader, the highest that was,
and these two readers were all the readers that I ever read.  Grammar
was not so easy.  My text-book was Smith's.  I would start at the
first of the book, and get about half through at the end of the term.
This I did for a half dozen years or more.  Finally when I started to
high school I took up Clark's grammar and finished it.

But, to go back a little, father after the great flood, went down to
Texas and bought several hundred acres of land and came back and sold
his farm intending to move to Texas, but changed his mind and sold
his Texas land for a song in the shape of a beautiful colt.  This
colt grew into one of the prettiest and best horses your grandfather
ever had.  But remember it cost hundreds of acres of land which are
worth thousands of dollars now.  It was like paying too much for your
whistle.

If we had gone to Texas, boys, I do not know what might have been but
I do know now that you are and that you have one of the best mothers
that lives.  Often have I heard her pray with tears in her eyes that
you and all the boys might be saved from the use of tobacco and
strong drink.

Father next turned his attention towards securing a home in the
pocket of the White River, which he did by buying a farm in Daviers
County on the border of Clark's Prairie and adjoining the village of
Clarksburg, which is now the city of Oden.  At the time of our
removal to Clarksburg I was about nine years old.  We liked our new
home.  At this time Daviers County was a wilderness of brush, trees
and swamps, with plenty of wild game,--deer, <DW53>s, opossums,
squirrels, turkeys, ducks, quails, snowbirds, and of wild fruits,
grapes, plums, crab-apples