The Five Visualized Presentations to be Given at the All Hastons MidAmerica Gathering
Wayne Haston, Haston family historian, will trace the Haston (originally “Hiestand”) family roots back to the 1400s in Zurich, Switzerland, and from there to the Rhineland of Southwest Germany, to Colonial Pennsylvania, to the Northern Neck of Virginia, to Western North Carolina (now East Tennessee), to Knox County, Tennessee, and ultimately to what is now Middle Tennessee where he settled in 1804.
Jeremiah Haston, probably the youngest child of Daniel Haston, was born in Tennessee. He moved to Gallatin County, Illinois along the Ohio River where seven of his eight children were born in a period of approximately 20 years. After the death of his wife, Esther Riddle, in 1837 he moved the family to what is now Dallas County, Missouri, where the family settled and made their mark on the county in the latter half of the 1800s. Wayne will tell the story of Jeremiah and his family, including some of their experiences during the Civil War, some of their civic roles in Dallas County, as well as how we have recently discovered the long-lost Jeremiah Haston family burying ground.
In our afternoon tour, we will visit the farm that Jeremiah claimed when he arrived in Missouri, including the newly discovered (August 2026) family cemetery where Jeremiah and a few other members of his family are interred. The little cemetery was “lost” for many years, so much so that county historians assumed it did not exist. In addition to the unmarked grave of Jeremiah, we know of two Haston Civil War vetrans who are buried there, and at least four other family members.
When the good affordable land in the Tennessee “Haston Homeland” of White and Van Buren Counties was “bought up,” Daniel Haston’s children and grandchildren began to venture westward, to Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, etc., and even to California and the Northwest Region. They were always in search of good-land-cheap and more of it. Wayne will lead you through some of those most important journeys and tell you about some of our family members that achieved remarkable feats or noteworthy success.
The first of Daniel Haston’s sons to move west of the Missisippi River was Jesse Haston. He located in what is now the Northwest section of Missouri a few years before Missouri was a state. Jesse was unique in the early Haston family in several ways: Due to the deaths of his first two wives, he married three times and had 21 children! Unlike the Hastons elsewhere, he owned slaves and had a large plantation. And, near the end of the Civil War, Federal guerilla fighters ambushed him and killed him. You will enjoy the stories Wayne will share…some of them heroic…about a few of his most remarkable children and grandchildren.
Daniel Haston’s son, Isaac, fought heroically at the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812, but got a slow start on his road to success. He failed in his early attemps to find land and wealth, but a move to Missouri in about 1837 allowed him to realize the American dream. Within 20 years, he went from being land-less to an owner of 333 1/3 acres, making him a respectable land owner. For him and most of his family, Missouri was a temporary stopover on a life journey that ended up in Northern California.
In our afternoon tour, we will visit the Missouri farmland that Isaac settled on in 1837, and where he lived until 1857 when he moved to California. And we will see the actual site where his home was probably located.
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