Hays, John

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1857
    Full name
    John Hays
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    4
    Family
    John Hays (father), Eleanor Blaine Hays (mother), Jane Van Ness Smead (wife, 1865), Raphael Smead Hays (son, Dickinson Class of 1894)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Occupation
    Military
    Attorney or Judge
    Businessman
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Presbyterian
    Political Parties
    Republican
    Military
    Union Army
    Children in 1860
    0
    Marital status in 1860
    Single

    John Hays (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    John Hays was  born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on February 2, 1837 the youngest of two sons and a daughter of John and Eleanor Blaine Hays.  On both sides of his family, the young John Hays was descended from old and highly respected central Pennsylvania stock.  He was educated in the common schools of Carlisle and at the Plainfield Academy and entered Dickinson College in 1852.  After a time away from his studies, he re-entered the College in 1854 and joined the class of 1857.  He was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma and was elected to the Belle Lettres Society.  Following graduation with his class, he entered law studies in Carlisle with Robert Henderson.

    He was called to the Cumberland County bar in August 1859 and entered practice locally.  In August 1862, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and then first lieutenant in the newly raised Company A of the 130th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers.  The 130th was one of the undrilled and untrained new regiments thrown into the action that culminated in the battle of Antietam.  The unit later fought with heavy losses in the classes at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville where Hays, now adjutant of the regiment, was wounded in the right shoulder by a musket ball.  He also served as adjutant to General William Hays for a time at brigade headquarters of the 2nd Brigade of the Third Division.  He mustered out with his regiment on May 21, 1863 and returned to Carlisle, entering Henderson's law firm.

    He resumed a long and prestigious local career, serving as president of the Carlisle Deposit Bank, as co-founder and chairman of the Carlisle Manufacturing Company, and a director of the Carlisle Gas and Water Company.  He was active in civic and church affairs, as well.  A Presbyterian, he was one of the original trustees of the Metzger Institute for Women in Carlisle that his uncle founded.  He was also an active Republican and was a delegate to the national convention in 1880 and a presidential elector in the elections of 1904 and 1916.  He spoke of his war experiences in later life, publishing his remarks on his old regiment's achievements, and was a local member of the Grand Army of the Republic.

    He had married on August 8, 1865, Jane Van Ness Smead, sister of John Radcliffe Smead, and the couple had two sons and two daughters, including Raphael Smead Hays of Dickinson's class of 1894.  John Hays died in Carlisle on November 30, 1921.  He was eighty-four years old.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “John Hays,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/h/ed_haysJ.htm.
    How to Cite This Page: "Hays, John," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/5864.