52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS#45: ROBERT HASTINGS

Fellow geneablogger Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small has issued the
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. Basically, we have to post something every
week on a different ancestor, whether a story, picture, or research problem. I've
been tracing the ancestral lines of my grandmother Cora Barker, which include
the Barnes, Colby, Davis, Hoyt and Kelley familes, and now turn to my Hastings
ancestors.

I recently did two posts about my 7x great grandfather Robert Hastings and his
parentage. It turns out there is not too much information about Robert available
on Google ebooks. I did find some in a genealogy of the Peaslee family written
by Emma Adeline Kimball:

On the same page of the history is the record of a house built by Robert Hastings
in 1676. This was not far from the home of the Peaslees. It may have been a log
house, and a larger one have been erected £ few years later; but, the house of
Robert Hastings was, in 1696, licensed as a tavern. There was no Hastings among
the Proprietors of the town of Haverhill. Being a mason or bricklayer, it' is easy to
conjecture that he came to the place to work on the house of Joseph Peaslee. It
is certain that he married Elizabelh Davis, born March 11, 1653-4; that her father
gave to Robert Hastings the land on which he built his house, and a few years later
added to the former gift of land one cow-common right and pasturage.
Robert Hastings, Sen., in a deed recorded April 21, 1710, gave to his son Robert thirty
acres of land on the "back side of ye said land I now live upon"; also a piece of meadow, half the orchard, and the east end of the house, to be his at the signing of the deed. For himself and wife, during life, he reserved the other half of the house and orchard; after their decease, Robert, the son, was to have the whole house and all of the orchard.

Elizabeth, the daughter of Robert Hastings, Jr., married Joseph Kelly, Jr., and lived on the homestead. It has never passed out of the family, the present owner being a descendant
of the Kelly and Hastings families under a different name.
pp10-11
The Peaslees and Others of Haverhill and Vicinity (Google eBook) Press of Chase Brothers, Haverhill, Ma. 1899

There was also this:
Katharine, eldest daughter of Robert and Elizabeth (Davis) Hastings, married Samuel Davis, Jr. Elizabeth Hastings married the third Joseph Peaslee. Robert Hastings, Jr., married Elizabeth Bailey, daughter of Deacon Joseph Bailey of Bradford, March 18, 1706. John, brother of Robert, Jr., married May 2, 1717, Ednah "Bealy," sister of Elizabeth. George Hastings, born April 24, 1688, and his brother John built their houses at the foot of the hill beyond the homestead, the home of Robert Hastings, Sen., and his son Robert. The house of one was near the-highway, in later years known as the J. H. Morse place, which was destroyed by -fire many years since. The other brother built his house on the edge of the intervale, now the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Swain, the daughter of Oliver Morse, in whose family it has been for more than a century, having been purchased of Robert Hastings of the third generation, son of the builder.p44

I was struck by the fact that Robert was a bricklayer. That's the third ancestor that
had that occupation, and all from different branches of my family. Besides Robert
Hastings on the maternal side of my Dad's family, there is 5x great grandfather
Joseph Ellingwood on his paternal side. And my Mom's side, her great grandfather
John McFarland from Ireland had worked as a bricklayer in Edinburgh, Scotland!     

THE QUESTION OF ROBERT HASTINGS PT2

My next stop in trying to find a clue to the identities of Robert Hastings' parents
was at FamilySearch.org Historical Records Collections, specifically the Massachusetts, Land Records, 1620-1986 for Essex County. Robert Hastings had married his wife there in 1676 and died there in the town of Haverhill so I looked for transactions that might
have been made between him and whoever his father may have been.

I found these entries under Hastings in the Deed index (grantee) 1640-1799 Had-Pix

Among them were transactions where Robert received or bought land from his father
in law James Davis.Some, like the following one, call him Robert Hastings Jr.

Others just refer to him as Robert Hastings. And to complicate matters further, my
ancestor had a son named Robert, and in later transactions the son is called Jr and
my ancestor Sr.

It's possible my 7x great grandfather Robert Hastings' father was likewise named
Robert Hastings. It's also possible there could have been another older relative, such
as an uncle or cousin in the area with the same name and my ancestor was called
Robert Hastings Jr to differentiate him from the other. But I think I can say with
some certainty that his father was not Walter Hastings of Cambridge, Ma.

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.