Hester Jane (Mercer) Hastings '04

Hester Jane (Mercer) Hastings '04

Hester Jane Mercer was born in Readville, Massachusetts in 1877 to Joseph and Mary Ellen (Cullen) Mercer. She graduated from Windham High School in Willimantic, Connecticut in 1899 and attended Brown University, earning an A.B. in 1903. She then pursued graduate work at Simmons, graduating in 1904. Mercer married William T. Hastings, an English professor at Brown, in Willimantic in 1907, and the couple had three children, including two daughters who also went on to academic careers.

In addition to supporting women’s suffrage, Hastings was committed to women’s education. From 1905 to 1907, she was head of the Slater Memorial Homestead, Brown University’s first women’s dormitory, and she was a member of the Women’s College Advisory Council at Brown for many years. Hastings served as president of the Brown University Alumnae Association from 1907 to 1909, and also remained involved in her high school’s alumni affairs, returning to speak at Alumni Day in 1904. Hastings died sometime before 1954, and her husband and children established a book fund in her memory at the Brown University Library.