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Showing posts with label John Hastings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Hastings. Show all posts

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Flashback: How the Hastings descendants came to California

Oil brought the Hastings family West.

family tree of Mary Hazel Wolfe Nevis

Mary Hazel Wolfe's mother was Jennie Hastings. Like her husband James Tarr Wolfe, Jennie and her family were from Pennsylvania, perhaps Oakdale (near Pittsburgh). 

Jennie Evelyn Hastings


Jennie's siblings include John, Cyrus, Laura, Alfaretta "Allie", Jesse, Emma, Elwood, William, Quincy, Frank, and Wayne. Since Quincy's middle name is Dickson, he might the "Dick" in the photo below:

Jennie Hastings, Allie Hastings, Frank Hastings, Wayne Hastings, and Dick Hastings



possibly Frank Hastings

back of photo of Frank Hastings

The Hastings family was already in Venango County by 1850 at the time of the oil boom there. Although the family set themselves up as farmers, they were enterprising and got into other businesses such as barge work, transporting goods such as oil barrels down stream to Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. Frank Tuller Hastings (Mary Hazel's uncle) got into the oil business, which took him from Venango County to New Mexico, California, Montana, and Alberta. When Frank was still in Albuquerque, in the second decade of the 1900s, his sister Jennie and her husband James Tarr Wolfe had moved there, too. After Jennie died in New Mexico in 1924, her husband relocated to Los Angeles with their daughter Hazel's family. Hazel's brother Leslie moved to nearby San Bernardino, California, and their brother Ellwood to Las Vegas.

Merrill Hastings on "Pride", Hastings Farm, Pennsylvania


(Merrill Hastings is Wayne's son, Hazel's cousin. The photo would be from the first decade of the 1900s, as Merrill was born in 1899.)

believed to be Mary Davidson Wolf, perhaps 1870s

Leslie H. Wolfe, 1917, U.S. Navy, World War I

J. Ellwood Wolfe circa 1920

The Nevis family lore says that William Guy Wolf and Mary Davidson's son James Tarr Wolfe (1864–1936) was a farmer but had also invested in a company drilling for oil; his wife Jenny Hastings Wolfe (1867–1924) and mother-in-law Mary Jane McQuaid Hastings (1832–1915) complained after a while that the company was not striking any oil and they nagged him into selling his shares. Three weeks after the share sale, that company struck oil. Arnold maintained that James Wolfe never recovered from the "theft" of his good fortune and never forgave his mother-in-law. After Jennie died, he panned for gold in California certain his luck would return.

(On the other hand, the Canal Best web site says that James Tarr Wolfe's great grandfather John Brookmire Hastings (1797–1872) "owned land near Franklin [Pennsylvania] which became a valuable oil field — after he sold it" so I wonder if the generations got mixed up a bit and Jenny Hastings Wolfe and her mother Mary Jane McQuaid Hastings got a bad rap unfairly here in the family legend.)

Another myth from the Hastings side of the family involves ancestors of Jenny Hastings. There is indeed a line of noble Hastings in British history: Francis Hastings (1560–1595), son of the Earl of Hastings (George Hastings, 1540–1604), who was himself son of Francis Hastings, 2nd Earl of Huntingdon (1514–1561), the son of George Hastings, 1st Earl of Huntingdon (1488–1544), son of Edward Hastings, 2nd Baron Hastings (26 November 1466–1506), son of William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings (circa 1431–1483), and so forth. So the peerage is beyond dispute, and frequently their wives' lineages are even more distinguished, but unfortunately there is little evidence of this ancestry for the Hastings family of Pennsylvania, though I suppose it is not out of the question either, through perhaps some younger brother who did not inherit the title, estate or wealth, or was exiled in disgrace to the colonies.

a family tree for Mary Hazel Wolfe Nevis, sketched circa 1970

Instead, Hazel's great grandfather John Brookmire Hastings was born out of wedlock to Mary Sutley and John Hastings. A Wikitree entry for Mary Sutley shows a deed book entry describing a case of John Hastings having knocked up Mary, who sues him for child support after her marriage to another man, John Brookmire:

Venango County, PA Deed Book A, pp. 59
Whereas MARY BROOKMIER, daughter of Christian SETLEE(sic), formerly of Franklin County and state of Pennsylvania, now of the county of Venango and state aforesaid, about 9 years ago at the town of Chambersburg did enter an indictment against a certain John HASTY(sic) for unlawfully begotten her, the said Mary, with child...and the said John Hasty found guilty and judgement being entered in favor of said Mary (for certain sum or sums of money supposed to be 50c per week for a space of __years and $14. for expenses at birth of said child)....and whereas the said Mary having since entered into the marriage state with a certain John BROOKMIER and in order to bring about a final close of said business and to receive the remainder sum of money due in consequence of the decree aforesaid, the said John Brookmier becomes party to these presents..... Appoint George Setlee(sic) of Venango County, as their true and lawful attorney to demand the money from John Hasty.....

John Brookmire Hastings, the same one that sold his land before oil was discovered on it, was raised in the Brookmire family, but retained his biological father's surname. I could find nothing further of his father, the scoundrel John Hastings — no family history, no later activity.

The family religion (Presbyterian) comes down through the Anglo-Irish branch of the family: the McQuaids, the Duffields, and the McClintocks, but it appears that all of Hazel's ancestors were Protestants of some sort. The German side of her family emigrated from the area near the Rhine — they were Protestants fleeing the many wars devastating that region, particularly the Thirty Years War. And through her grandmother Hannah Smith, the lineage goes back to the early Plymouth Colony leader Thomas Prence and church deacon Henry Cobb


next post  Flashback: Arnold's early years

previous post  Flashback: Plumer, Venango County, Pennsylvania

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Flashback: How the Wolfe family came to California

The Wolf family originates in the territory around the Electoral Palatinate region of (modern) southwestern Germany and in the area near Strasburg (now Strasbourg, France). They were Calvinists in an area of Catholic-Protestant conflict, perhaps suffering in the 1688–1689 Nine Years War (especially the 1688–1689 Rhine Campaign by the French). With some variation in the surname spelling Wolf/Wolfe, the family arrived in the United States after 1700 and married into Protestant English immigrants (arriving after 1600) and Scots-Irish immigrants (arriving after 1700). 

The family religion was Presbyterianism, from those Northern Irish Protestant ancestors. They settled in northwestern Pennsylvania, near the city of Erie, and took up farming. During the Pennsylvania Oil Rush of the mid 1860s they invested in oil drilling, as seen by the share certificate below, issued to Hazel Nevis's grandfather William Guy Wolf (1829–1899). 

200 shares of Oil Creek & Gordon's Run Petroleum Company, William Guy Wolf, November 25, 1865

200 shares of Oil Creek & Gordon's Run Petroleum Company, William Guy Wolf, November 25, 1865

Mary Hazel Wolfe with a dog, circa 1898, Venango, Pennsylvania

After 1910, the family moved to Minnesota for a brief stay (maybe just a year) and then to New Mexico (the U.S. Census places him in Navajo County by 1920). His children finished their education in Albuquerque. (Daughter Hazel — Arnold's mother — trained to be a school teacher in Albuquerque.) When Hazel's family moved to Los Angeles, he was by then widowed and lived in the apartment over the detached garage. My father remembered him as the one who ran the family victory garden (continued from World War I into the Great Depression) and also as disappearing for weeks at a time to pan for gold, certain he would recover his lost fortune, still due to him in some manner. 

James Tarr Wolfe and family (Jennie Hasting Wolfe with children Hazel, Leslie and Ellwood),
probably New Mexico, circa 1912

A family myth I grew up with was our direct descent from Major-General James Wolf, the officer responsible for the British victory over the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec in 1759 that helped to end French rule and put it firmly under British control. In the 1960s my older brother Allan saw in the encyclopedia that General Wolfe had never married, so this great-great grandfather was converted immediately into a great-great-great uncle. Further investigation shows that General Wolfe was not of German origin and did not originate in the Hessian auxiliaries who settled in the United States after the Revolutionary War ended; he was English, from the County Kent, England. There appears to be no evidence for a relation between our German Wolfs and the accomplished general.

Aprl 2021
Mary Hazel Wolfe Nevis's family tree in Ancestry.com according to her grandson Joel A. Nevis y Flores


next post  Flashback: Plumer, Venango County, Pennsylvania

previous post  Flashback: How the Nevis family came to California

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943