Henry's father identified

If you miss something the first time, I guess you miss it all the time.

I recently exchanged emails with another Hastings researcher, Wilma Pinola. She told me that she had spoken with Dick Poplin (who did one of the earliest Hastings genealogies about 70 years ago) at a 2004 reunion, and he told her that Henry's father was named Joseph Hastings, who died around 1808 at the age of 100. Mr. Poplin credited T. R. Marsh, Mrs. Louise G. Brown and Ruth Cates Robinson for his information.

I had already predicted that Henry's father was named Joseph, based on Scots-Irish naming conventions of the time. (Under those conventions, Henry's eldest son Joseph would have been named for his paternal grandfather.) But my initial reaction was to dismiss it for lack of evidence. I've never seen a will or a land transfer attributable to this Joseph Hastings.

Then I looked at the censuses, and I changed my mind.

The original 1790 Orange County census has been lost, but the names have been reconstructed from old tax lists and so forth. And the 1790 census shows two men named Joseph Hastings. Now, in 1790, Henry's son Joseph (the Tory) was 33 years old.

Who is the second Joseph?

Then I looked at the 1800 census, which inexplicably shows three men named Joseph Hastings in Hillsborough, Orange County. One's a junior. (They're enumerated as "Hasten," but they are grouped with Henry, Henry, Jr., William, Robert and James "Hasten," so they're clearly our folks.)

One Joseph is is 16 to 25 with a wife and a daughter. Joseph Junior is 26 to 44 and has three sons, a young daughter, a wife and two slaves. The third 45 or older, and he's living with a female age 10-15.

Joseph Junior is certainly Henry's eldest son, who married Susannah Holloway in 1775. By the time the 1800 census was completed (around 1801), this Joseph's three oldest children (Elizabeth, Margaret and Joseph) were married and out of the house, leaving three sons (Henry, Robert and Stephen) and two daughters (Mary and Susannah) still living with their parents.

The youngest Joseph is Junior's son, who married Nancy Pittman on April 9, 1800. The only uncertainty is that I show this Joseph's first born child to be a boy (John, born January 26, 1801).

So who is the third Joseph? He can't possibly be Henry's son -- too old, and that son is well accounted for.

He's got to be the same "second Joseph" who is on the 1790 census. And I think the girl living with him is Junior's daughter Mary (born 1786, later married Thomas Thomas).

Once more, with emphasis: in 1790 there are two heads of household in Hillsborough named Joseph Hastings, and in 1800 there are three. That's one more Joseph per census than my confirmed research ever showed.

I sure wish I could find some other traces of this elder Joseph. But even without those confirmations, I'm convinced. And I've updated my family tree accordingly.

Next question: who was this Joseph?