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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

THE QUESTION OF ROBERT HASTINGS PT1

One of the reasons I've enjoyed the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is that
it has inspired me to do research on the older lines in my ancestry that I hadn't
spent much time on as yet.  It's helped me understand some of the ways the
different lines came together, and in some cases helped me push some of those
lines back a generation or two further.The past few months I've been exploring
the ancestors of my paternal grandmother Clara Barker,  which will continue
next with the Hastings family. 

But in doing some preparation for the first post I stumbled across a problem
with the parents of my 7x great grandfather Robert Hastings. I had them as
Walter Hastings and Sarah Meane but I had no record in my database for their
births, marriage, and deaths, nor did I have anything for Robert's birth other than
a birth year of 1653. I'd probably gotten the information that Robert was the son
of Walter and Sarah from a Google search years ago when I was a beginner but I
hadn't known enough to cite sources back then, so I set out now to see if I could
find something to confirm that.

What I found on Google didn't help:

-In an entry about John Meane of Cambridge on p 153 of An Historic Guide to Cambridge, it says Walter Hastings married Sarah Meane in 1655, two years after the supposed
birth year of Robert Hastings.


 -On page 216 of Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University Volume 3,
an entry for John Hastings, Class of 1681, it says he was the eldest son of Walter and
Sarah Meane, and that he was born on 2 Dec 1660



- I found the will of Walter Hastings in the Middlesex County, MA: Probate File Papers,
1648-1871. There was no son named Robert named among his children.

There was one more place I decided to look at for answers.

To be continued.

2 comments:

Celia Lewis said...

Indeed - I have a more than a few like that, found during this year's challenge... 'back then' I saw the data, evaluated it on the spot, decided it seemed definitely 'good enough', and added in the details without any sources or explanations about why I thought it was good information. Big sigh.

Bill West said...

I think it's a learning process. Those of us for whom genealogy is a passion learn to dig more.