Sacramento County
Biographies
JAMES M. HASTINGS
JAMES
M. HASTINGS.--A rancher of wide experience who has
come to make a specialty of high-grade pears, is James M. Hastings, whose model
farm is situated some eight miles north of Sacramento,
on the Natomas Boulevard,
in Reclamation District No. 1000. He has
forty acres there of rich orchard land, and grows other fruit besides
pears. He was born in Sacramento
on March 25, 1864, the son of Daniel E. and Kathryn (Cunningham) Hastings, who
were pioneer settlers of the Golden State. Other connections of his family were also
identified with the building of the West in a very interesting way; a
great-uncle, Lansford Hastings, was the official guide who piloted General
Fremont to California in
1846. His father was formerly proprietor
of the American Union Hotel and stockyards of Sutterville, known as Old
Sacramento, and he was also prominent as a successful placer miner, and
prospector, and our subject owns many priceless
heirlooms of those early days, left by his parents. His father returned to Ohio
with his brother, James, in 1862, and he served with the 147th
Volunteer Infantry, while Uncle James was a prisoner of war at Andersonville,
and died in Ohio, in 1778. The worthy couple had seven children, and our
subject was the fifth in the order of birth.
Growing
up, James Hastings became a building contractor in Sacramento,
and during his activity there, he constructed many of the finest
residences. Later, he spent nineteen
years in Alaska and the frozen
North, so that he has had a great many thrilling experiences. In 1896, he left Sacramento
with a party of forty-five young business men like himself, all eager about the
“gold rush,” and the next spring started out with a partner and followed to its
headwaters the Koyukuk
River, being the second white man
ever known to have returned alive from that region. He found traces of Lieutenant Allen, who had
preceded him into the region, but who was lost, the Indians recovering his body
from the ice-flow, years later. He spent
nineteen years in Alaska, and still owns much desirable
property there, and he is a personal friend of ex-Governor Stone, of Alaska. He is also the founder of Hammond River Diggin’s, in Alaska. Mr. Hastings returned to the Golden
State in 1913, and he has since made Sacramento
his home, notwithstanding that he has twice returned to the “Treasure-Box of
the World,” as he terms Alaska, since 1915, and in the
meantime has developed a modern fruit ranch near Sacramento. He is a prominent member of both the Pioneer
Society of Alaska and the Pioneers of the North.
At
a point above parallel sixty-eight, north, Mr. Hastings was married to Miss
Mary Boysen, a native of Elkmont, Wyo.;
and their fortunate union has been blessed with the birth of three
children: Helen, Ruth and James
Hammond. Mr. Hastings belongs to the
Native Sons of the Golden West, and is affiliated with Parlor No. 3, of Sacramento.
Transcribed by Barbara Gaffney.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 667.
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles,
CA. 1923.
© 2007 Barbara Gaffney.