Serranus Clinton Hastings
Serranus Clinton Hastings ( born November 22, 1813 in Watertown, Jefferson County, New York, † February 18, 1893 in San Francisco, California ) was an American lawyer and politician. Between 1846 and 1847 he represented the state of Iowa in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Career
Serranus Hastings attended public schools in his home state of New York and in 1834 was even a teacher at the Norwich Academy. In 1835 he moved to Lawrenceburg in Indiana. There he laid the newspaper "Indiana signal". After a subsequent study of law and its made in 1837 admitted to the bar, he began practicing in his new profession in Burlington later in State of Iowa.
Politically Hastings was a member of the Democratic Party. After the founding of the Iowa Territory, he was from 1838 to 1846 member of the Territorial Government Council, which he chaired in the meantime. After the founding of the state of Iowa, he was in the first midterm elections, which were still held all across the state, for the first parliamentary mandate of the new state in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he took his seat on December 29, 1846. He finished the runs until March 3, 1847 legislative session, and then retired again from the Congress because he had given up for reelection at the regular congressional elections of 1846.
Between 26 January 1848 and the January 14, 1849 Hastings served as Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Afterwards he moved to Benecia, California. Even in his new home state, he was Chief Judge of the Supreme Court. This office he held between December 1849 and December 1851. Between January 2, 1852, and January 2, 1854 was Hastings Attorney General of California.
After the end of his time as Attorney General to Hastings withdrew from politics. He first went into the banking business, in which he had no success by a bank insolvency. He then became active in the real estate market. In this industry, he rose to become a wealthy businessman. He donated the money to the foundation of Hastings College of the Law, the first law school of the University of California in 1878. He was appointed dean for this institution. He also supported the establishment of the St. Catherine Academy in Benicia with financial resources. Serranus Hastings died on 18 February 1893 in San Francisco. He was married for 10 June 1840 Azalea Brodt, with whom he had nine children.