William Soden Hastings (June 3, 1798 – June 17, 1842) was a
United States representative
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
from
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
.
Life and career
Born in
Mendon, Massachusetts
Mendon is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,228 at the 2020 census. Mendon is part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, an early center of the industrial revolution in the United ...
, his father was
Seth Hastings
Seth Hastings (April 8, 1762 – November 19, 1831) was a United States representative from Massachusetts. Born in Cambridge in the Province of Massachusetts Bay to Seth and Hannah (Soden) Hastings, he was a descendant of the colonist Thomas H ...
, also a U.S. Representative. On his father's side of the family, he was a descendant of
Thomas Hastings (colonist)
Thomas Hastings ( – c. September 15, 1685) was a prominent English immigrant to New England, one of the approximately 20,000 immigrants who came as part of the Great Migration. A deacon of the church, among his many public offices he served ...
who came from the
East Anglia region of England to the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. The younger Hastings completed preparatory studies and graduated from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1817; he studied law, was admitted to the
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
in 1820 and commenced practice in Mendon.
Hastings became a member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives
The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from 14 counties each divided into single-member ...
in 1828, and served in the
Massachusetts State Senate
The Massachusetts Senate is the upper house of the Massachusetts General Court, the bicameral state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Senate comprises 40 elected members from 40 single-member senatorial districts in the st ...
from 1829 to 1833.
He was elected as a
Whig to the
Twenty-fifth,
Twenty-sixth, and
Twenty-seventh Congresses, serving from March 4, 1837, until his death in 1842. He died in
Red Sulphur Springs, Virginia (now West Virginia) and was buried in Old Cemetery, Mendon.
See also
*
List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899)
References
*Buckminster, Lydia N.H., ''The Hastings Memorial, A Genealogical Account of the Descendants of Thomas Hastings of Watertown, Mass. from 1634 to 1864'', Boston: Samuel G. Drake Publisher (an undated NEHGS photoduplicate of the 1866 edition).
External links
Descendants of Thomas Hastings websiteDescendants of Thomas Hastings on Facebook
1798 births
1842 deaths
People from Mendon, Massachusetts
Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Massachusetts state senators
Harvard University alumni
Whig Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
19th-century American politicians
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