American Medical Biographies/Hastings, Seth (1780–1861)
Hastings, Seth (1780–1861).
Seth Hastings, Jr., model physician of the old school and cultivator of a "botanical garden," was born at Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, August 23, 1780. His father, Seth Hastings, son of Hopestill and Lydia Frary Hastings, was born at Hatfield, Massachusetts, December 6, 1745. He studied medicine and settled in Washington, Connecticut. Here he married, November 10, 1799, Eunice Parmelee, eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Parmelee, born December 30, 1763, by whom he had eleven children. In the winter of 1797 Dr. Hastings left Washington, removing to the then almost unbroken wilderness of Oneida County, New York, his eldest son, Seth Hastings, Jr., then seventeen years old, accompanying the family.
When Seth, Jr., had completed his academic studies he studied medicine in his father's office and at the age of twenty-one was admited into partnership with his father. For nearly fifty years he was the leading physician of Clinton, and was often called to adjoining towns.
Clinton has been called a transplanted New England town, and for nearly a hundred years preserved many of the characteristics of the earlier Puritan settlements of the East. It became an educational center; an academy, which later was raised to the rank of a college and named for Alexander Hamilton, who had given invaluable aid in its establishment, brought instructors from Yale and students desirous of entering the professions. It was in this community of substantial farmers, talented educators and keen business men that the life of Dr. Seth Hastings, Jr., was passed.
He was from the first one of the leading minds of the community, and did much to determine and mold its character. He was the friend of temperance and order, morality, education and religion. He was actively interested in all good public enterprises; his religious character was marked. His piety showed itself in his household, in the prayer meeting, amid his professional pursuits, and in all the relations of life. Possessed of good native endowments, he cultivated them by lifelong reading and observation. He was of a social nature; he loved to find the sunny side of life, and did much to make it sunny. This trait of character helped to make him an agreeable and successful physician.
In 1802 he married Huldah Clark, daughter of John and Anne Emmons Clarke, who had removed to Clinton from Colchester Connecticut; she died in September, 1850.
About the year 1808, Dr. Hastings built the red brick house which for more than ninety years was known as the "Hastings Homestead." The house, which is used as a bank, is one of the old landmarks of Clinton.
This house was a home of generous hospitality. Dr. Hastings was particularly fond of social gatherings in which music formed a leading part of the entertainment. For many years he was the leader of the choir in the Old White Meeting House. On Thanksgiving evenings for many successive years the parlors of his house were filled with family friends, old and young, of a musical turn, and the walls echoed with joyful singing of tunes old and new, ancient ones having the preference. On such occasions he seemed to be in his true element. It is said that one could seldom pass the old brick mansion without hearing vocal or instrumental music, or both.
In 1811 Dr. Hastings was commissioned surgeon of a regiment of militia in the County of Oneida.
He was exceedingly interested in horticulture and botany, and his orchard and garden were remarkable for that time. He was constantly trying to obtain better and hardier fruits, and took great satisfaction in making experiments with scions sent him from distant parts of the country. Among his trees he cultivated some mulberries on which he raised silkworms, and silk was spun from the fibre produced.
He had a large botanical garden in which all native plants that could be induced to grow there were to be found, together with many sent him by correspondents from other sections of the country. Students who were pursuing a course in medicine with him required to work in this garden. In this way an opportunity was given them to become acquainted with the plants and in many of these young men a love for botany was inspired that influenced their later lives. Samuel Beach Bradley (q. v.) was one of the students who thus acquired his first knowledge of, and interest in, that science. Poppies were largely cultivated in the garden, and the juice carefully collected, was made into opium, which was used in the doctor's practice. Others of the herbs grown there, also played their part in curing the ailments of his patients, for in that early day doctors had to rely on themselves for many of their remedies.
There were few surgical appliances at this time, and for the simple operations requiring instruments, Dr. Hastings made designs which were worked out by the village blacksmith.
To Dr. Hastings and his wife, Huldah, fifteen children were born, fourteen of whom reached maturity. To all of these he gave good educations, four of his eight sons graduating from Hamilton College, two of them becoming physicians, one a Presbyterian minister, one a missionary to Ceylon, one a lawyer, one a landscape architect, one a civil engineer, and one a wholesale merchant.
An old-time daguerreotype, taken in the 40s, shows Dr. Hastings as a remarkably fine looking man with well shaped head, high forehead, snowwhite hair but youthful looking face and very keen, bright eyes. When in his seventieth year he was stricken with paralysis, and for ten years confined to a wheeled chair, unable to speak, but retaining his mental faculties, and until the last interested in scientific subjects and in all the stirring events preceding the Civil War. His death occured in Clinton, March 26, 1861.