Florence Angeline Staley (Mrs. Tom) Greenwade (1914-2000) grew up and spent her entire life in the Willard, Missouri area of Greene County (near Cave Spring[s]). She had Staley relatives living near the land Isaac Haston settled in the mid-1830s, so she no doubt was familar with the farm lands in that part of Greene County. She was well-educated and an educator. In 1979, Florence wrote a letter to retired Col. Howard H. Hasting (Sr.), descendant of Daniel Haston through his son, Joseph. In the letter, she pin-pointed Isaac Hasting’s/Hastin’s (Haston’s) land and where an old cemetery is located. From other evidence I have, I am confident this is also the spot where the Isaac Hastin family lived in Greene County, MO before moving to California in 1857.
Note: Tom Greenwade was the member of the Professional Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame who persuaded the Dodgers to bring Jackie Robinson across the color line, signed Mickey Mantle to a contract with the New York Yankees. He also signed many other famous professional baseball players.
Before visiting this area, I assumed that the arrow that Col. Howard H. Hasting drew, pointing to the Isaac Hastings site–the place Mrs. Greenwade told him about and which Mr. Hastings no doubt had visited before created the drawing–was just a general direction area to Section 10. However, when I visited that area for the first time in April 2026, I noticed that the tip of that arrow points to a special site on Isaac’s land. Now, I’m going to show you what that arrow points to.
In the plat drawing above, notice the house (in the red rectangle) that was at this spot when the 1876 publication was in the process of being created, just (at the most) 19 years after Isaac’s Hastin’s family moved to california. It’s the only spot in the land that Isaac had owned where a house was located at that time the plat drawing was created. And this is the area of Isaac’s land where Mrs. Greenwade said an old cemetery was located.
I think we can be 99+% sure that this is the exact site of Isaac’s home while living in Greene County, MO. Also, I think we can be confident this is where the “Old Haston Burying Ground” is located, where Isaac’s son, William Carroll Haston, was buried in 1845. Also, Mary Hasten Wadlow, daughter of Isaac and Agnes Haston/Hasings/Hastin and widow of John Wesley Wadlow, died in 1854. The location of her grave is unknown, not appearing in the records of known local cemeteries. John Wesley and Mary Hasten Wadlow were living about 1 1/2 miles south of her parents. I think we can assume she was also interred on this property, near the grave of her brother, and perhaps other members (infants in particular) of the Isaac and Agnes Hastin family.
Before moving to California, Isaac and Agnes probably thought they, and their children, would live the remainder of their lives in that Greene County, MO area. Thus, they probably established what they assumed would be a burying ground for their descendants, many years into the future. Therefore, it was known at that time as the “Hasten Burying Ground.” Unfortunately, when they moved to California the property was owned by another family who had little or no interest in the Hastin graves, as was true of later owners.
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