Serranus Clinton Hastings was an American lawyer, judge and politician.
Background
Clinton Hastings was born on November 22, 1814, in Watertown, New York, United States. His ancestors emigrated from England and settled in Rhode Island early in the seventeenth century. His father, Robert Collins Hastings, commanded an army of soldiers at Sacketts Harbor in the War of 1812. His mother was Patience Brayton.
Education
Serranus studied for six years at Gouverneur Academy, New York. He commenced the study of law with Charles Thorpe of Norwich, but in a few months he moved to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where in 1834 he entered the law office of Daniel S. Major, under whom he completed his legal studies.
Career
In December 1836, Serranus Hastings was admitted to the bar and in the following January moved to the Black Hawk Purchase (now the State of Iowa). In 1837 Governor Dodge of Wisconsin appointed him justice of the peace of the territory between Burlington and Davenport. When Iowa Was erected into a separate territory, Hastings Was elected on the Democratic ticket to the first territorial legislature. He became president of the Territorial Council and in 1846 became Iowa’s first representative in Congress. At the expiration of his term in Congress he was appointed chief justice of the supreme court of Iowa, which position he resigned to go to California during the gold rush of 1849.
Within six months of his arrival in California Hastings was appointed by the legislature as the first chief justice of the newly formed state supreme court. He was peculiarly well qualified by nature and experience to establish such a court since much of California’s constitution had modeled after the constitutions of New York and Iowa. He performed efficiently the difficult task of administering the law in a jurisdiction which was undergoing a transition from the Spanish to the American legal system.
In 1851, Hastings was elected attorney-general and while still holding this office he assumed private practice. He soon acquired a large fortune by successful investments in real estate and by his law practice.
Achievements
Connections
Hastings married Azalea Brodt, at Muscatine, Iowa, in 1845. She died in Pau, France, in 1876. In 1885 he married Lillian Knust, from whom he was divorced five years later but subsequently remarried.