Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Hastings, Massachusetts

48 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Weston town. It lies in ZIP code area 02493. It stands on Cherry Brook. The Survey maps it on the Concord quadrangle.

Hastings within Middlesex County

Then and now

1886 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 103 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Hastings, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of Hastings, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

48 sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

25,965 words on this township

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 names this settlement in its chapter on Weston Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Seaverns - contracted to erect and cover a frame building thirty-one feet square. The building, though unfinished, was first used October 1,178-i, and was finished in 1788. July 14, 1789, a church of sixteen members was recognized by an ecclesiastical council. They had no settled minister till January 30, 1811, when they united with the church in Framingliam, and Rev. Charles Train was ordained as pastor of the Baptist Church of Christ in Weston and Framingliam. They separated. May 3, 18:i6, Mr. Train remaining with the Framingham church, the Weston church numbering at this time about forty members. The present church-building was dedicated October 8, 1828. June 30, 1830, Rev. Timothy P. Ropes, a graduate of Waterville College in 1827, was ordained as pastor, and remained three years. The parsonage was erected from the material of the old church-building during the latter part of his stay. From small beginnings the church has grown to be the largest in the town. Since Mr. Ropes the successive pastors have been : Rev. Joseph Hodges, Jr., a graduate of Waterville College, 1830, "settled in 1835, resigned in 1839; Eev. Origen Crane, educated at Newton Theological Seminary, settled in 1840, resigned in 1854; Rev. Calvin H. Topliff, graduated at Brown University, 1846, settled in 1854, resigned in 1866; Rev. Luther G. Barrett, graduated at Harvard College, 1862, settled in 1867, resigned in 1870 ; Rev. Alonzo F. Benson, settled in 1870, died July 15, 1874; and Rev. Amos Harris, the present pastor, settled January 1, 1873.

Passage source: History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Weston Town - it names this place 2 more 2 times.

Fires near this place

61 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 61 fires within 5 miles of Hastings between 1992 and 2020, burning about 44 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	22
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	18
Recreation and ceremony	5
Arson/incendiarism	5
Power generation/transmission/distribution	5
Railroad operations and maintenance	3
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Other causes	1
Natural	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
5 September 2020	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
5 September 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
3 September 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
1 September 2001	Natural	under an acre	Minute Man National Historical Park	FISKEHILL
26 August 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
1 August 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	WELLESLEY
4 July 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Middlesex County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 2,133 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 2,133 specimens collected within 10 miles of Hastings between 1898 and 1975: 1,080 Animalia, 572 Plantae, 428 Fungi, 23 Protozoa, 13 Bacteria, 9 Chromista, 8 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A. B. Seymour and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Corvus brachyrhynchos brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822	1900	not recorded	Wayland
Trientalis borealis Raf.	1900	A. P. Chute
Actaea pachypoda Elliott	1898	Ernest Charles Smith
Aglaospora profusa (Fr.) De Not.	1898	Collector unspecified
Antennaria howellii subsp. canadensis (Greene) R.J.Bayer	1898	Williams, E.F.
Antennaria parlinii subsp. fallax (Greene) R.J.Bayer & Stebbins	1898	not recorded
Antennaria plantaginifolia (L.) Hook.	1898	not recorded
Acer carpinifolium Siebold & Zucc.	1900	A. K. Harrison	Harvard Botanic Garden, Cambridge.
Acer palmatum var. dissectum (Thunb.) Miq.	1900	A. K. Harrison	Harvard Botanic Garden, Cambridge.
Agaricus brunnescens Peck	1900	Morris, G. E.	Waltham
Alnus serrulata (Aiton) Willd.	1900	J. Murdoch, Jr.	West Roxbury
Araiospora pulchra Thaxt.	1900	Thaxter, Roland	Stony Brook, Mass. [Massachusetts]

All 2,133 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

6 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 6 workings within 5 miles of Hastings: 5 past producers, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Massachusetts Broken Stone Co	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Weston Mine	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Burton Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Pepperell Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Town of Wellesley	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Town of Wellesley	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Kendal Green	0.7 miles	48
Silver Hill	0.9 miles	48
Weston Station	1.2 miles	46
Prospectville	1.5 miles	48
Weston	1.6 miles	46
Cedarwood	1.8 miles	46
Waltham Highlands	2.3 miles	46
Riverview	2.6 miles	46

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 611810. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.