GREENFIELD — As part of a wave of local events marking the nation’s 250th anniversary, about 40 local residents recently gathered at High Street Cemetery to honor Lt. Benjamin Hastings, a Revolutionary War patriot.
The Greenfield-based Contentment Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution led a wreath-laying service on June 13 in Hastings’ memory in the cemetery Hastings himself helped create during his many years spent balancing public service in Greenfield and military service in the Massachusetts Militia.
“As descendants of those who secured our freedom, we carry a special responsibility to honor [patriots’] sacrifice, preserve their stories, and ensure that their legacy is remembered and understood by future generations,” said Mary Tedesco, Massachusetts state regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution. “Each generation serves as a steward of our nation’s history, entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that the sacrifices, achievements and ideals of those before us are never forgotten. Today, we honor that important legacy.”
The ceremony began with the Franklin County Community Chorus singing the national anthem and attendees recited the Pledge of Alliance and The American’s Creed in unison.
Katherine Maleno, left, listens as Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution State Regent Mary Tedesco speaks at the wreath-laying ceremony in memory of Lt. Benjamin Hastings in the High Street Cemetery in Greenfield. Credit: PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
Claire Moynihan, a lineal descendant of Lt. Benjamin Hastings, a Revolutionary War soldier, reads his biography at the wreath-laying ceremony in his memory in the High Street Cemetery in Greenfield on June 13. Credit: PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
Members of the Franklin County Community Chorus sing the national anthem at the wreath-laying ceremony in memory of Lt. Benjamin Hastings in the High Street Cemetery in Greenfield. Credit: PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
The gravestone of Lt. Benjamin Hastings in the High Street Cemetery in Greenfield. Credit: PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo
Claire Moynihan, a descendant of Hastings and member of the Contentment Chapter, detailed her ancestor’s impact on Greenfield and the country’s founding.
Born in Deerfield in 1728, Hastings heard the call to public service while harvesting grain in 1756 with four other men. A group of Native Americans attacked the men before Hastings and John Graves fled into the Green River, Moynihan said.
“Experiences such as this left their mark on Benjamin,” Moynihan said.
In 1756, Hastings petitioned the government for aid to better secure the area. Later that year, Hastings joined the committee seeking tax relief from the General Court and served in Col. Israel Williams’ regiment, where he earned the rank of captain.
Hastings spent the 1760s “moving steadily between the demands of household, town and public duty, as so many New England men of his generation did,” Moynihan said. “By 1768, Benjamin’s standing in the community was well-established.”
He joined the committee selling military fortifications in Greenfield in 1760, helped pick the location for a town cemetery in 1768 that eventually led to the establishment of High Street Cemetery, served on the committee overseeing Greenfield’s separation from Deerfield in 1769, and was elected to the Greenfield Selectboard in 1770 and reelected in 1772.
“By 1774, the political world around Benjamin Hastings was changing rapidly,” Moynihan said. “The First Continental Congress had met, tempers were rising, and the old balance between loyalty and resistance was breaking down.”
According to the Contentment Chapter’s research, Hastings “emerged in Greenfield as a committed supporter of the Revolution” following the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where Hastings’ cousin Samuel Hastings and Samuel Hastings’ son, Samuel Hastings Jr., fought. After Greenfield heard rumblings of the Revolutionary War, residents gathered to choose volunteers to fight for independence. The group rallied around Hastings as a leader.
“Capt. Agrippa Wells immediately warned Benjamin what might happen if the Revolution failed: ‘Sgt. Hastings, you will have your neck stretched for this,'” Moynihan said. “The danger was real, but Benjamin did not hesitate.”
Hastings then served as Capt. Timothy Childs’ second-in-command and later in 1775 with Wells in the same unit as his brother Samuel Hastings and son Oliver Hastings. In 1776, Hastings was appointed as lieutenant of the 5th Hampshire County Regiment of the Massachusetts Militia.
Under Childs in 1777, Hastings served at Ticonderoga, the site of the American forces’ first offensive victory in the Revolutionary War two years before. After fighting with Wells against British Gen. John Burgoyne, and later in Bennington and New London, Hastings retired from the militia in 1780 due to poor health.
His passion for American independence extended beyond the battlefield, Moynihan told attendees in the cemetery.
When the Rev. Roger Newton invited the Rev. Jonathan Ashley, a notorious Loyalist, to deliver a sermon at the Congregational Church of Greenfield, Hastings and other patriots boarded up the meetinghouse — an incident that “captured the intensity of a moment when political loyalties were straining even the most ordinary institutions of town life,” Moynihan noted.
Chaplain Cathey Boschen and Tedesco laid a wreath against Hastings’ grave, and the attendees fell silent as the Col. Henry Knox Sons of the American Revolution Color Guard fired off a ceremonial musket salute for Hastings.
During a reception at the Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew, Tedesco described the ceremony as “an outstanding way” to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary and “bring history alive to local citizens.”
“One of the things that Daughters of the American Revolution does is honor those patriots that fought for our freedom,” Tedesco said. “Regardless of whether your ancestors came here in 1620 or 1920, it’s always relevant.”
For Nancy Maleno, vice regent of the Contentment Chapter, the ceremony highlighted the ideas that fueled the American Revolution and echoed in the United States Constitution.
“Lt. Hastings [and] Capt. Wells represent this community of people who laid down their way of life to pick up their gun to go and march, to go and fight for an ideal that would be a major change in the world. Two hundred and fifty years later, we are celebrating this ideal of a country governed by the people, for the people,” Maleno said. “It’s extremely important that we remember these causes, remember the sacrifices. … History is meant to be lived out, not to be simply learned.”
Maleno’s mother and Contentment Chapter Regent Katherine Maleno added that many patriots like Hastings left behind their farms and families in pursuit of a democracy.
“If we’re going to celebrate 250 years of America,” she said, “then we really need to start at the very beginning.”
