The Story of the Soldier and the Spoons

In The Battle of April 19, 1775, Frank W. Coburn included this anecdote about the aftermath of the British march:

About a sixth of a mile yet farther along, stood the home of Samuel Hastings, near the Lexington boundary line, yet within the town of Lincoln. Hastings was a member of Capt. [John] Parker’s Lexington Company, and was present and in line for action when [Maj. John] Pitcairn gave that first order to fire [or not].

As the British column swept along, one of the soldiers left the ranks and entered the house for plunder, unmindful of the dangers lurking in the adjoining woods and fields. As he emerged and stood on the doorstone, an American bullet met him, and he sank seriously wounded. There he lay, until the family returned later in the afternoon, and found him. Tenderly they carried him into the house, and ministered to his wants as best they could, but his wound was fatal. After his death they found some of their silver spoons in his pocket. He was buried a short distance westerly from the house.

Publishing in 1912, Coburn credited this story to two great-grandsons of Samuel Hastings, Cornelius Wellington (born 1828) and Charles A. Wellington (born 1837), both members of the Lexington Historical Society. Of course, both were born over half a century after the battle.

It’s significant that the story had not surfaced in print before, even in The Hastings Memorial, an 1866 family genealogy that included entries about Samuel Hastings, his family, and their Revolutionary experiences.

Alexander Cain of Untapped History researched the Hastings family in depth for the Lexington Minute Men and his book We Stood Our Ground. He recently wrote about Samuel Hastings, Jr., again on the Historical Nerdery blog.

On the story of the wounded soldier with the spoons, Cain now warns:

There are no period records or accounts of the family encountering a wounded soldier. More importantly, the Hastings’ homestead was not located on the Boston Road near the Lincoln and Lexington lines as many 19th and 20th Century accounts claim. Instead, it appears the homestead was further in the interior of Lexington and away from the fighting.

Cain’s essay then follows the younger Samuel Hastings through his capture alongside Gen. Charles Lee in late 1776. Did he return to Lexington? Check it out.

A Sampler of Bethiah Hastings

Yesterday Stacey Fraser at the Lexington Historical Society shared an image of a sampler from its collection and thoughts about its political significance.

“This sampler was completed by Bethiah Hastings of Lexington at age 8” in 1774, Fraser wrote. So how did the political boycotts of the era, leading up to the Continental Congress’s Association, affect her family’s ability to find silk thread and steel needles?

I got curious about what else Bethiah experienced. She was the seventh child of Samuel and Lydia (Todd) Hastings, who by that time were in their fifties and forties, respectively. A previous girl named Bethiah had died the year before she was born, and baby Thomas born in 1772 would die in late 1775.

Bethia’s father and her oldest brothers, Isaac and Samuel, Jr., were all members of the Lexington militia. Samuel, Sr., and Isaac were actually lined up on the town common when the British army columns arrived on 19 Apr 1775, the father said to have “stood at the right of the front line.” They survived.

Both men named Samuel Hastings saw duty during the siege of Boston. Samuel, Jr., enlisted in the Continental Army the following year and ended up in Gen. Charles Lee’s life guard before being wounded and captured along with the general. Isaac mobilized during Gen. John Burgoyne’s invasion from Canada and helped to escort the Convention Army of prisoners back to the Boston area.

The paterfamilias Samuel Hastings lived to be 99. His veteran sons also lived well into the nineteenth century.

In contrast, the daughter who made this sampler, Bethiah Hastings, died of consumption in 1786, shortly after turning twenty.

What’s more, within a two-year period all four of the other Hastings children who had survived to adulthood also died of consumption:

• Lydia (1759-1788)
• Hephzibah (1762-1789)
• John (1764-1789)
• Abigail (1768-1788)

That’s the pattern of unrelenting death that made a few New England families turn to disinterment and corpse-burning in a desperate attempt to ward off the disease, as I discussed earlier this month.