Author: Hastings, Sally
Biography:
HASTINGS, Sally, formerly Anderson (1773-1812: ancestry.com)
Sarah ("Sally") Anderson was born in Lancaster County PA. Her father, Robert Anderson, died when she was a child and her mother remarried. She herself, against the wishes of her family, made an unhappy marriage in 1789 that ended in separation. Her much older husband, Enoch Hastings (1728-1812), was a carpenter; they had three children, one of whom died in infancy. The "family tour to the west" was a trip she made with her sister and brother-in-law when they emigrated to Washington County in western PA in 1800. She stayed there for four years, then returned to her children in Lancaster County, where she became housekeeper to her widowed brother, was the centre of a literary circle, and contributed to the local newspaper. She went back to the west at some point, however, and died at Cross Creek, Washington County, on 30 Apr. 1812. Her children grew up and married there. (ancestry.com 8 Sept. 2025; RPW, citing an article about Hastings in ELH 7 [1940] 68-82; Washington Reporter 4 May 1812) HJ