Captain Benjamin Hastings of Bolton

A soldier's journal entry for Saturday, September 15, 1759, records that "yersterday a general Cort marshell Set at Crown point for ye trial of Capt Hastens of our Regt who was Stationed at ye head of ye Lake and was Confind about 10 Days ago for Refusing to go upon ye works without Pay." The sentence read out in public orders was that Captain Hastings of Colonel Willard's regiment, "acused of mutinos Behaviour is found guilty of ye Crime and is therefoer Dismesed from ye Servis with Disgrace," with a pass to go home and a bar on staying in any part of the army. The journal is Lemuel Wood's, kept in Willard's regiment, and it does not give the captain's first name. Henry S. Nourse, in his Military Annals of Lancaster, names him as Captain Benjamin Hastings of Bolton, who commanded a company in Willard's regiment that year.

Sixteen years later a Captain Benjamin Hastings led a Bolton company to Cambridge in the Lexington alarm, and the roll includes a Nathaniel Oakes, who may have become Hastings's son-in-law.

Ensign, 1755

The earliest record found is Captain Joseph Whitcomb's company, mustered in March 1755 in Colonel Timothy Ruggles's regiment, which fought at Lake George on September 8 of that year. Its roll lists "Benj. Hastings, ensign, Bolton." In 1759, when Colonel Abijah Willard's regiment of eighteen companies was raised, Nourse writes that "Captain Benjamin Hastings led a company in Willard's regiment" and lists the men in it from Lancaster, Bolton, Harvard and other towns, with "Capt. Benjamin Hastings" among those of Bolton (pp. 77-78).

A family at Bolton

On May 12, 1743, Waltham recorded the marriage of Benjamin Hastings and Abigail Sawtell. Bolton's records name their children: John, born October 5, 1744; Abigail, November 14, 1746; Susanna, February 11, 1748/9; Elizabeth, January 25, 1750; Ruth, February 26, 1753; Edmund, December 24, 1755; and Grace, April 12, 1757. The entries don't call Benjamin a captain, but the name and town make him probably the officer of 1755 and 1759. Bolton's deaths add two of the children. Edmund, "s. Benjamin and Abagail," died on October 23, 1769, "in 15th y." A John Hastings who died at Bolton on March 4, 1825, "a. 80," fits the eldest son's birth in October 1744, though that entry names no parents, so he is probably, not certainly, the same John. No death for Benjamin or Abigail is entered on that page.

Nathaniel Oak and Susanna Hastings, 1773

On June 2, 1773, Bolton recorded the marriage of Susanna Hastings and Nathaniel Oak Jr. The bride was probably the Susanna whom Bolton's records enter as "Susanna, d. Benjamin and Abigail, Feb. 11, 1748-49." A 1903 sketch of the Oak family says her father was Captain Benjamin Hastings.

The "Jr." does not say which Nathaniel. A cousin, Nathaniel, the son of Nathaniel and Keziah Oake, was born at Westborough on January 12, 1742, and his parents were living at Bolton. The 1906 Oak register says the bridegroom was the other Nathaniel, born at Westborough on May 16, 1751, a grandson of the immigrant Nathaniel Oake; no record found says so, and the entry names no parents. The register also gives its reason for setting the older cousin aside. Of the Nathaniel born in 1742 it says: "Probably died young. Nothing is definitely known beyond the record of his birth," and "He was not living in Bolton 1773, because his cousin was then known as Nathaniel Jr." The register cites no record of his death (register, page 16).

The company, April to December 1775

Three companies from Bolton, 127 men in all, marched to Cambridge at the Lexington alarm. The roll of Captain Benjamin Hastings's company in Colonel John Whitcomb's regiment, fifty-eight names in all, lists a lieutenant, Jonathan Houghton, a second lieutenant, Jonathan Merriam, and among the rest "Nathl Oakes." The roll does not say which Nathaniel. In 1832, at Chelsea, Vermont, Nathaniel Oak, aged eighty-one, swore in his pension declaration that on April 19, 1775 he entered "the Company of Massachusetts Militia commanded by Capt Benjamin Hastings & Lieut. Haughton in the Regiment Commanded by Col. John Whitcomb," that it was called Minute Men, that he marched to Cambridge, arriving on the 20th, and that he served about six weeks "according to his best recollection." He gave his residence in 1775 as Winchester, New Hampshire. The roll gives eighteen days. A second old soldier, Elijah Whitney, swore in his deposition in the same file that "Nathaniel Oak then residing in Winchester in New Hampshire" belonged to the company and marched with it to Cambridge. The 1906 register places Susanna (Allen) Oak Butler's family at Winchester; no record of the move has been found.

In a sworn statement of December 22, 1837, the pensioner said he witnessed the 1777 marriage of his half-sister, named "Susan Button" in the transcription and "Susannah Butler" in the catalog caption; on the page itself the surname can be read either way. The Nathaniel born at Westborough in 1751 had a mother, Susanna Allen, who married John Butler in 1754 and had a daughter Susannah in 1760, so the statement probably concerns that family. The full statement is on John Oake and Susanna Allen. His oath and Whitney's deposition put him in Hastings's company, and he is probably the "Nathl Oakes" on the roll, the only Nathaniel it names.

The file names no wife and says nothing of Hastings as a relative. An 1839 application to transfer his pension to Maine says he was moving "to spend the remainder of his days with his son who resides in Exeter," and a witness, "Nathaniel Oak Jun'r of Exeter," a "very respectable farmer," swears he is the same man. He was very likely the son the application mentions, though the page doesn't say so. The service named on that page is under Captain Humphrey and Colonel Wingate, the 1776 enlistment.

A printed genealogy independent of the 1906 register fits a Hastings marriage: the Winslow Memorial (1877, no. 5250) enters Nancy Oak, born April 1, 1792 at Chelsea, Vermont, "dau. of Captain Nathaniel and (Hastings) of C.," with the note "The wife of Capt. Nathaniel Oak had a brother who led a company on to Bunker Hill, and fought there in that memorable battle till their ammunition was gone." The note leaves her first name blank and doesn't name Benjamin or Bolton. If the bride of 1773 was the Bolton daughter, she was the captain's daughter rather than his sister, as the Winslow note has it; the 1906 register's older claim that Hastings was Oak's later father-in-law would fit.

Chelsea's town clerk's copy records her death: "Oak, Susannah, age 52 yrs, husband Nathianiel Oak," dying in September 1801. If she was the bride of 1773, that age is broadly consistent with the Bolton birth of February 1748/9. The index reads the day as the 7th, but the handwritten digit is unclear. The Chelsea Nathaniel's granddaughter was named Susannah Hastings Oak (born May 26, 1808, daughter of Benjamin H. and Hannah Oak). Together with the 1877 Hastings notice and the 1773 Bolton marriage of "Nathaniel Oak, Jr., & Susanna Hastings," they point to the 1751 pensioner as the groom of 1773, but which Nathaniel married her is still unconfirmed. No record names the 1773 bride as the Chelsea Nathaniel's wife; that link comes from the 1903 sketch and the 1906 register, and the death entry gives no maiden name.

In 1802 Norwich's records enter the marriage of "Capt. Nathaniel Oak" of Chelsea to Elizabeth Gates on September 7, 1802 (a town clerk's copy; it does not say who was widowed). The family register adds a son, Benjamin Hastings Oak, whose gravestone gives his birth at Winchester, New Hampshire, on July 4, 1776; the register gives March 3, 1776.

On June 30, 1775, Colonel Asa Whitcomb (a different man from the Colonel John Whitcomb of the April alarm roll) wrote that he had a full regiment "exclusive of Benj Hastings who has 53 in his Company, and he has done Duty with me and declines joining any other Reg't," and asked that the company's officers be commissioned in his. The company appears on the eight-months' coat roll with fifty-six men, eleven of them from Putney. Nourse places it at Bunker Hill among the Lancaster-regiment companies. He cites a petition from a Lancaster man in it, Elisha Houghton, who said he helped a wounded man off the field, and a soldier's account, quoted by Richard Frothingham, that "Captain Benjamin Hastings led one company of thirty-four, and took post at the rail fence." No other source checked so far confirms it. The 1903 sketch adds that he re-enlisted on April 27, 1775, and that in 1780 he was appointed to procure recruits for the Continental army (p. 194); no record of either has been found.

Nourse uses the same name and town for the captain of 1759 and the captain of 1775, and no source says whether they are one man. A dismissal "with Disgrace" in 1759 did not keep a Benjamin Hastings from commanding a company in 1775, if they are the same.

Two men, one tree entry

Some family trees give Benjamin Hastings of Bolton the dates 1702 to 1756, but those dates seem to belong to a different man. A Benjamin Hastings, son of Samuel, was baptized at Watertown on July 26, 1702, and the Middlesex probate index lists a Benjamin Hastings of Watertown in 1756. The captain of 1759 and 1775 could not have died in 1756. No birth or death record has been found for the captain of Bolton.

What we're still looking for

No source found gives his birth, his parents or his death. The 1749 diary entries in which Ebenezer Parkman mentions "Mrs. Tainter and her sister Hastings" and a son Benjamin appear to concern the Watertown family, not Bolton. Bolton's town and church records, any surviving court-martial file and a probate record, if one exists, may still answer those questions.

Sources

• Lemuel Wood, journal of the Crown Point expedition, September 15, 1759, in Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, vol. 20 (1883), pp. 156-157.
• Henry S. Nourse, The Military Annals of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1740-1865 (1889), pp. 36 (1755 roll), 77-78 (1759 company and dismissal), 115-116 (Lexington alarm roll), 121-122 (Whitcomb's letter, Bunker Hill) and 127-128 (coat roll). archive.org/details/militaryannalsof00nour
• Vital Records of Waltham, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 (marriage of Benjamin Hastings and Abigail Sautell, May 12, 1743); Vital Records of Bolton, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (births of the Hastings children; marriage of Susanna Hastings and Nathaniel Oak Jr., June 2, 1773; deaths of Edmund, 1769, and John, 1825, p. 204).
• Watertown Records, vol. 4 (baptism of Daniel and Benjamin, sons of Samuel Hastings, July 26, 1702); Index to the Probate Records of the County of Middlesex, "Hastings" (Benjamin of Watertown, 1756).
• H. L. Oak, Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the State of Maine (1903), pp. 193-195, for Susanna as Captain Hastings's daughter; page 194 shown inline above.
• Vital Records of Westborough (births of Nathaniel, May 16, 1751, and the cousin Nathaniel, January 12, 1742); Vital Records of Shrewsbury (marriage intention of Susanna Oak and John Butler, May 1754); Nathaniel Oak's pension declaration of August 21, 1832, Revolutionary War pension file S.18534, National Archives; Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, vol. 11, p. 600 (eighteen days).

The full account of Nathaniel Oak of Westborough is on Nathaniel Oak and the cabin-boy story, and the searches made for his family are summarized on the research log.