Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/525

HASTINGS, while, at the same time, the powers of sensation and motion inhere in the mind itself."

Dr. Haskell was a critical student of the physiological literature of the time and a man of originality and positive convictions which he expounded with skill and a ready use of language. His ideas were, however, sometimes clouded by complicated and confusing classifications and hypothetical considerations. His services as a writer and speaker were in demand by his neighbors.

In personal appearance he was six feet tall, wore a full beard and stooped a little as he walked. His kindness of heart is shown by his carrying off his wife's entire baking of bread to a poor family that was in need. One stormy night an unknown man stumbled into Dr. Haskell's office and said he was starving. The doctor got him something to eat, tucked him up on his office sofa and went to bed, saying to his remonstrating wife, "He can't steal much, and I will take my chances that he is honest." The wayfarer proved himself to be both honest and grateful. Small wonder that Dr. Haskell was mourned when he died of pneumonia at his home at the age of sixty-eight, January 21, 1878.



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 admitedadmitted [sic] 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