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The Family Letter of 1895 by William Henry
Hardin is of real value to the descendants of Henry Hardin of California.
William H. Hardin was a nephew of Henry Hardin and he crossed the Plains to
California in 1853 with his uncle and mentioned this fact in his letter. He
also named his parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great, great
grandparents, the last of whom were Henry and Wilmouth (George) Harding. In his
letter he did not struggle with the change in name, even though his own father,
William J. Hardin, legally changed his name from Harding to Hardin in 1826 on
his wedding day. I don't know why they changed their name except that it was a
"southernism", a form of speech which leaves off the "g" in a word ending in
-ing. There were Hardins in Kentucky when they arrived, and they believed that
they were all related, and they may have been. The families were large, and
some families left off the "g" while still in Virginia. The stumbling block in
searching out the family wasn't W. H. Hardin's disregard for change of name,
but in his belief that the Hardins were Huguenots and had come from
France.
William H. Hardin named the generations back to Henry and Wilmouth
Harding, and then disregarding the family name of Harding, brought in the
confusing hypothetical tale concerning the three Huguenot HARDIN brothers who
had fled France because of religious persecution. It was Mrs. F. Everett Bowen,
genealogist, in San Antonio, Texas, and a descendant of the Harding family who
told me that the Henry Harding who married Wilmouth George had not come from
France, but was the son of Henry and Anne (Beltcher) Harding of Stafford
County, Virginia.
It has been my good fortune to prove this connection
through land inheritance, and the line from Henry and Anne of Stafford County,
Virginia, to Thomas Harding, the Virginia ancestor, is a matter of record
mainly from Northumberland County, Virginia. Our immigrant ancestor was Thomas
Harding of London, England, who came to Virginia with his uncle, Thomas Orley
Jr., in 1650. His father was George Harding, Citzen and Grocer of London,
England, and his mother was Mary Orley, daughter of Thomas and Anne ---- Orley.
The name Orley may be of French origin, and there were many Huguenots in London
at this period. IF Mary Orley's acestors were Huguenots, and I believe
that it is quite possible, this could account for the strong tradition that the
family had Huguenot ancestors.
William H. Hardin wrote that Wilmouth
(George) Harding was an English woman. This is interesting: she may have been
entirely of English ancestry, but she and her two brothers were the fifth
generation of their family in Virginia. They were preceeded by four Nicholas
Georges, the first of whom owned land in the Isle of Wight County prior to
1638.
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