Wayne and Sharon McCoy Haston
Donald Wayne Haston was born April 18, 1947, in White County, Tennessee, the son of Boyd and Mary Ruth Davis Haston. For the first six and a half years of his life, before moving into the town of Sparta, his family lived just a few miles from the site where Daniel Haston settled, lived, died, and was buried. As a teenager, Wayne often drove past the Haston Big Spring and Daniel’s homesite but had no idea of how that area was part of his ancestry.
After graduation from White County High School in 1965, Wayne attended college and seminary in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He met Sharon McCoy in college and they were married July 24, 1970. Wayne received a bachelor’s degree and three seminary degrees, culminating in a Doctorate in Religious Education in 1975. In 1997 he was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Professionally, Wayne was a seminary professor for 22 years, as well as a part-time associate pastor for 29 years. In 1995, he joined the staff of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he became the Executive Director of Training and served until 2021.
In 1999, Wayne became interested in his family’s history. After he determined that Daniel Haston was the son of Henrich Hiestand, he discovered that his home in Pennsylvania was only 45 minutes away from where Henrich Hiestand settled in Hempfield Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and three hours north of where the Hiestands settled in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. In mid-2023, Wayne and Sharon returned to live in what Wayne called “The Haston Homeland,” the area of White, Van Buren, and Warren County, Tennessee where Daniel Haston settled and from which his descendants spread across the United States.
Wayne’s genealogical-historical endeavors started as a simple hobby to satisfy his own curiosity, but gradually evolved into a passion to research, record, and pass on the amazing story of the life, heritage, and legacy of Daniel Haston. That passion was driven by the desire to pull the story together into a format that could be communicated through future generations, among all branches of the Haston family.
Wayne’s paternal line to Henrich Hiestand, who was born in 1704 in or near the village of Ibersheim on the Rhineland of Germany (although his ancestors were Swiss from Canton Zürich, Switzerland):
Henrich Hiestand > Daniel Haston > David Haston > William Carroll Haston > Charles Thomas Haston > Charles Beason Haston > Ernest Boyd Haston > Donald Wayne Haston