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BETHEL MAINE HISTORY—THE BETHEL JOURNALS—HENRY H. HASTINGS |
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Henry Hastings Sr. home on Church Street—it stood on a site now taken by Gould’s field house and tennis courts |
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Henry and Annie Hastings home and Henry’s office located on the corner of Main and Broad Streets, Bethel |
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Henry Harmon Hastings
Henry H. Hastings Jr., (1918-1968) was born in Bethel on October 13, 1918. He was the son of the Henry H. Hastings (1865-1934), also an attorney, and Ethel Richardson Hastings. He died unexpectedly at his home on Main Street Sunday, August 25, 1968.
Mr. Hastings was a former Oxford County Attorney, former municipal court justice at Norway, and at the time of his death was a candidate for the office of Oxford County Attorney in the November 1968 election. |
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He was a graduate of Gould Academy; a member of the class of 1941 at Bowdoin College; and a 1944 graduate of Boston University Law School. He was admitted to Maine, Massachusetts and Federal Court practices following law school graduation and opened his law practice in Bethel in 1946.
Henry Hastings married Annie MacKinnon of Mexico and they had a son, Stephen, and a daughter, Cynthia. |
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Mr. Hastings served as county attorney from 1953 through 1956. In 1960, he was appointed to serve as judge of the Norway Municipal Court, a duty he continued through 1965 when the new District Court system closed the Norway court.
When a group of Bethel Chamber of Commerce members were organizing the company which became the Sunday River Skiway Corporation, Mr. Hastings became clerk of the corporation.
He drew up the incorporation papers at no charge providing continuous legal support. The other officers with whom he served were Addison Saunders, president; Murray Thurston, vice president; and Wilbur Myers, treasurer. |
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He was past president and member of the Oxford County Bar Association and a member of the Maine Bar. In addition, Mr. Hastings was a member of the West Parish Congregational Church, Bethel; Bethel Lodge No. 97, AF and Am; Kora Temple Shrine of Auburn, and a member of other local groups and Masonic orders.
He was also president of the Bethel Area Development Corporation, and a trustee of the Bethel Savings Bank. Mr. Hastings served as moderator at Bethel town meetings and as chairman of the Bethel Planning Board for several years.
Mr. Hastings obituary was published in the August 29, 1968
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Hon. Henry H. Hastings, father of the previously noted, was born in Bethel, March 25, 1865, the son of St. John and Elizabeth (Atherton) Hastings. He graduated from Gould Academy and Bowdoin College. He married Miss Ethel Richardson in 1916 and they had one son Henry Harmon Jr., born October 13, 1918. Mr. Hastings began the practice of law in 1899 in the law office of Hon. Richard Frye in Bethel.
Henry Hastings was Bethel Schools Superintendent in 1903 when Maine passed the law obligating towns to pay high school tuition.
He was active in state politics—a member of Governor Percival Baxter’s Council in 1921-22. He served on the Prison Commission since 1923. He represented Oxford County as the Republican Representative to the legislature in 1905 and served two terms in the State Senate in 1907 -1909. In 1931 he served as Judge at the Oxford Probate Court. Judge Hastings and his family occupy a fine residence on Church Street. Oxford County Citizen, 1931 Special Illustrated Edition
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Henry Hastings was a descendant of Amos Hastings, a Revolutionary War veteran who had fought at Bunker Hill and was an early settler at Bethel. Amos Hastings’s home in Middle Interval hosted the first town meetings after Bethel’s 1796 incorporation. In 1800 Amos Hastings moved across the Androscoggin River to establish a large farm near the mouth of Sunday River. Amos and Elizabeth Wiley Hastings were the great-grandparents of Henry Hastings. St. John Hastings (1832-1904) and Elizabeth Atherton Hastings (1832-1916) were the parents of eight children of whom Henry was their fifth child, and their second son. The Hastings farm was one of the large progressive farms in Bethel. As a boy and young man, Henry Hastings would have been fully occupied in farm duties.
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Henry Hastings Sr. probably attended elementary school at the district school less than one-half mile away past the Philbrook’s farm on the other side of Sunday River, an easy walking distance. Later, his two younger sisters, Cora and Carrie and brother, Charles, would have attended the same North Bethel school. |
