McCallister's McAlisters (and some other good families)

The Hardin Family

Major John Hardin is my maternal 7’th great grandfather. I include him and his family here, not only because his daughter married my maternal 6’th great-grandfather Thomas but also because his son Benjamin was so instrumental in steering both my Thomas and Heavrin lines to Kentucky.

John Hardin was born in Virginia about 1710. His ancestors, thought to be French Huguenots, originally settled in the New York Colony in the mid 1600s and lived there for a generation before coming to Virginia. John married Catherine Marr about 1732. They had 10 children. John saw service in the French & Indian war. Between 1767 and 1769, the Hardin family became one of he pioneer families to settle on Georges Creek, Springfield Township, Fayette County Pennsylvania. Here, John was a Justice of the Peace, a flatboat builder and an outfitter of militia expeditions heading farther west. He died in Nelson County Kentucky 13 October 1789.

Daughter Mary “Polly” Hardin had married Owen Thomas in 1751, when both families were still living in Virginia. The Thomas family likewise moved to Fayette County Pennsylvania within a year or two of the Hardins relocating there. Son Benjamin “Ben” Hardin was well known in that area, and befriended both the Thomas family and the newly arrived Heavrin brothers and their families. They all had to have known each other. Ben regaled both families with stories of the rich and bountiful land that he had seen on his forays into central Kentucky. Within just a few years, all three families had moved and were living in central Kentucky.

The Hardin family went on to become pivotal in the history of Kentucky. Hardin County is named after them, as was the town of Hardinsburg. As for the Heavrin and Thomas family, the irony is that a descendant of both families finally married, not in Pennsylvania, nor central Kentucky, but in Union County Kentucky. This marriage between Mary Lillian Heavrin and William Joseph Thomas occurred on 18 November 1913. They are my maternal grandparents.

The log cabin at the top of the page, while bearing no relationship to the Hardin family per se, is nonetheless representational of the housing that the early Hardin families would have used.