Produced by Roger Taft (RogerTaft at Cox.Net)
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Effingham
Kan.
Christmas, 1911
Dear Paul,—
I am sending to each of the other boys a copy of my Autobiographylike 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 andhanded 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 myfather, even from his father's father's father's, etc., back tofather Adam, the first Adam.
Z. S. Hastings
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 LawrenceCounty, Indiana. When the day came for me to be named, mother said,"He looks like my brother Zachariah," but father said, "He looks likemy brother Simpson." "All right", said mother," we will justchristen him Zachariah Simpson." And that is my name unto this day.
Now, when mother said 'christen' she did not mean what is usuallymeant by christening a babe, for if she had they would have had totake me to a river, for mother and father both believed, when it cameto baptizing, that is required much water. Mother, when baptized,was dipped three times, face first, and father once, backwards makingin each case an entire submerging or an immersion. Religiously motherwas 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 inChrist, let us be one in name." "All right," said mother, "let usdrop the names Dunkard and Quaker and simply call ourselves Christians.""Just so," said father, "but we must live Christians as well." Andthey did.
There runs in my veins both English and Irish blood. On the paternalside I can only trace my ancestors back to the early Quakers ofBaltimore. On the maternal side I know less, for it is only saidthat my great grand-mother was a handsome, witty, Irish-woman. Forsome 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 Quakersand Politically Whigs. More recently however, we are religiously,simply Christians, politically prohibition Republicans. I do notboast 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-halfyears old, in the fall of 1840, when General William HenryHarrison was elected the ninth president of the United States. Itwas on the occasion of a big rally day for Mr. Harrison when I, withmy parents, stood by the road-side and saw in the great processiongoing 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 wasthere because father and mother were there. There is a great