Elias Hasket was born on April 25, 1670, in Salem, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Stephen and Elizabeth (Hill) Hasket. Stephen Hasket, a soap-boiler and merchant of Salem, was a native of Henstridge, Somersetshire, where his ancestors, a race of prosperous yeomen and clothiers, were settled in the time of Queen Elizabeth. He came to Salem from Exeter, Devonshire, about 1666.
In 1696 Elias Hasket was commanding the ship New London. In 1698 he became involved in a lengthy litigation with his relatives in England over the estate of his uncle, Elias Hasket, a prosperous Henstridge yeoman. Through his relations with London merchants engaged in the West India trade he procured an appointment as governor of New Providence, the largest of the Bahama Islands. After some delay the King approved his appointment, June 27, 1700, and Hasket took oath of office on the same day.
Somewhat less than a year later Hasket arrived in New Providence. Early in October 1701 the people, under the leadership of John Graves, the collector of customs, with whom Hasket had quarreled, and instigated by Read Elding, one of the principal inhabitants of the island, whom the governor had imprisoned, rose in revolt against him. They imprisoned Hasket together with his brother-in-law, Benjamin Pickman of Salem, and seized the latter’s ship. After keeping the governor in prison for six weeks they put him on board a small vessel bound for New York. On his arrival there he went to his relatives in Salem and thence to England. His wife escaped from the island during that winter, to Charleston, South Carolina, and thence went to her husband.
On October 5, 1701, before Hasket had left New Providence, an assembly of the people addressed a memorial to the Lords Proprietors and the Commissioners of Trade setting forth their complaints against the governor, accusing him of extortion and tyranny in the performance of his duties, of illicit trading with the French at Cape François, and of harboring pirates, especially one of the crew of the notorious Captain Avery. To this remonstrance were appended depositions of several captains, among them the commander of a London ship, which set forth specific instances of his extortion and high-handed conduct toward them in the summer of 1701. Hasket replied with a long memorial, accusing the inhabitants of the island of disorderly and evil fiving, of illicit trade, robbery, and of giving assistance to the pirates of those parts.
On March 19, 1701 Hasket styled himself "Governor of the Colony of New Providence” in a power of attorney to Samuel Browne of Salem; but in a chancery suit which he commenced on April 3, 1702, against one of his cousins in Henstridge, he calls himself “of Henstridge Marsh Esquire. ” On September 27, 1702, the Queen in Council granted his petition for relief on account of his losses in the Bahamas and on December 31, of the same year, the Privy Council referred to the Lord Admiral “the petition of Captain Elias Haskett for the Command of a Fifth Rate Ship or some other Employment. ” It is likely, therefore, that he returned to the sea and that he was the “Capt. Hasket, formerly a Sea Commander, ” whose death was recorded in the Gentleman’s Magasine for March 1739.
The younger Hasket went in early life to Barbados, where he married Elizabeth Rich.
