I am sending to each of the other boys a copy of my Autobiography like 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 and handed 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 my father, even from his father's father's father's, etc., back to father Adam, the first Adam.
Z. S. Hastings
C H A P T E R O N E
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 Lawrence County, Indiana. When the day came for me to be named, mother said, "He looks like my brother Zachariah," but father said, "He looks like my brother Simpson." "All right", said mother," we will just christen him Zachariah Simpson." And that is my name unto this day.
Now, when mother said 'christen' she did not mean what is usually meant by christening a babe, for if she had they would have had to take me to a river, for mother and father both believed, when it came to baptizing, that is required much water. Mother, when baptized, was dipped three times, face first, and father once, backwards making in each case an entire submerging or an immersion. Religiously mother was 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 in Christ, let us be one in name." "All right," said mother, "let us drop the names Dunkard and Quaker and simply call ourselves Christians." "Just so," said father, "but we must live Christians as well." And they did.
There runs in my veins both English and Irish blood. On the paternal side I can only trace my ancestors back to the early Quakers of Baltimore. On the maternal side I know less, for it is only said that my great grand-mother was a handsome, witty, Irish-woman. For some 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 Quakers and Politically Whigs. More recently however, we are religiously, simply Christians, politically prohibition Republicans. I do not boast of my ancestors, boys, for they were humble, yet,
"Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good."