Memorials › Rev David Wilson Hardin

Rev David Wilson Hardin

1818 – 1890

Birth	1818
Death	1890
Cemetery	Halsell Cemetery Old Houlka , Chickasaw County , Mississippi , USA
FaG	https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/74445095

Bio

Some History of David Hardin: DAVID WILSON HARDIN Born 1818, was the fifth child. He too would return to Alabama. While there, he would marry fifteen-year-old Barbara Jane Samantha Vaughn. It is said that she was a rich man's daughter and that her parents gave her slaves and land. David Wilson Hardin seemed to live more on the grand style than did his brothers or sisters. He would also return to Mississippi. He bought a large plot of land and built a house where the Vardie James place would later be. It is east of Reid on the "other" road and east of the Hightower and Gates places I write about. David Wilson Hardin's old home or its foundations (with some newer house put on) would be where Mr. Vardie James would live and rear his family. Ruby James Kirkpatrick lives there now. David Wilson Hardin was back in Mississippi and living there by 1855, I think. His lands extended pretty far to the west. Some of it went up nearly to old Bonner school (the Calhoun county lands).He, like Stephen Edward, had married a daughter of a well-to-do man. Her father had given Barbara Jane Samantha this land or the money to buy it with. David Wilson Hardin was one of my maternal great-grandfathers. His daughter Gilly Hasseltine (Tinie) Hardin was my mother's mother. He was a Baptist preacher. He was said to have been a man who spoke clearly and enunciated well. I've also heard that he was a school teacher. He may have taught in Alabama. I never heard where he taught. I've wondered. He was once a pastor of the young Poplar Springs church, so I can imagine that he taught there. He sold that farm and moved up into Chickasaw county about five miles west of Old Houlka. The new home was in the Shiloh Church community. He may or may not have organized the church. He may have taught school there. Okolona was about nine miles east of the new home. He was interested in education and tried to educate his children. He sent his oldest daughter Mary Elizabeth (Aunt Lizzie) to a Female Academy over at Oxford, Mississippi. He sent my Grandmother to school in Okolona. That was after her mother, Barbara Jane Samantha had died and he had married an Okolona woman. Tinie stayed at the stepmother's family's home in Okolona one year and went to school. One by one, the daughters married men in Calhoun county and left the area. Barbara Jane Samantha Hardin died very young, in her thirties. He remarried (the Okolona woman, Miss Theresa Lacy). She grew tired of country life and eventually took their one daughter, Lydia, and 18 returned to Okolona. Finally, be and Tinie were there alone. I often followed her by the hour asking for tales of her childhood and girlhood up there. Oh, at the stories. If only I would have asked for names of the people involved in the incidents she told of. In summers when he would go to churches away from home to hold protracted meetings, she would go too and spend the time with young ladies in the community. He was invited to come to Poplar Springs for one and Tinie went too. A young man named Jeff Murphree rode up every day, or maybe was a few days house guest of some young man there. He was from another community. His parents lived then in a house on the very edge of Old town, as the Lloyd community ended "Papa", as I called him, said she was the prettiest thing he ever saw and said to himself, "She's mine if I can get her". They had not met before that. They were married the next February and David Wilson Hardin was left there alone. Two or three of the children had died. A son Sam had gone to Texas. (He returned once on a visit.) David Wilson Hardin died there alone. We've always been told he choked to death on a chicken bone. Neighbors must have found him. He may have choked eating, or he may have had a heart attack. He had had slaves and after the war some stayed on and worked there. A woman did housework, some of it, when Tinie was little. So, a black woman may have found him dead. He was dead and buried when Mama and Aunt Lizzie knew about it. Aunt Samantha (Mantie) and her family would move to Texas, so they may have been gone then. Aunt Katie married a Weldon and they would leave the Calhoun-Chickasaw area. David Wilson Hardin is buried in the Halsell cemetery near Shiloh Church. His grave is unmarked, but it is beside Barbara Jane's and she has a monument. The daughter, Lydia, who was born to his second wife Teresa, married a Ballard in the Okolona area. Her descendants is still there. Houlka Lake covers the "bottom" fields that he cultivated. We visit the old house site occasionally. It is in a game preserve now. A large plateau-like area where all the buildings were is still there. He had allowed his slaves to build a church and start a cemetery, some ruins of one church building are still there. The cemetery is still in occasional use. Descent of the slaves and their kin still bury there The slaves took the last name of Vaughn. They had been given to Barbara Jane Samantha by her parents, or some had. Aunt Leila Murphree Parker found one in Bruce, very old, who had lived there on the place, maybe born after the was but he could still remember David Wilson Hardin. He said "We had belonged to Miss Tish (Barbara Jane Samantha)". We went up to his old place in December 1982. Mr. Lyndon Mathis, who lives nearby, went with us. The Hardin house had burned long ago, but Lyndon Mathis stepped off the place where the walls had been. He said that he had hunted all over the area since he was a boy Rev. David Wilson Hardin and his second wife, Theresa Lacey Hardin, had one child, Lida M. Hardin, born January, 1876. He was a Justice of Peace in 1849 and a Constable in 1846. Per the 1850 census they lived in Beat 7, Division 16, Fayette, AL. David was also a Baptist Minister. Baptist Minister Shiloh Baptist Church, Calhoun Co, MS: After his family moved to Mississippi, David returned to Alabama with his brothers, Abraham, Stephen and Thomas, where he married Barbary Jane Samantha "Tish" Vaughn. His first children are shown to have been born in Alabama. However, by the 1880 census, they were in Calhoun Co., MS. Barbara's father supposedly gave her some land and several slaves when she and David married. As the 1860 slave census shows him owning 10 slaves, this very likely is true. David was a preacher and is mentioned in the Poplar Spring Minutes several times from April 1861 to February 1887. The Mississippi Baptist Historical Commission has him included in their records. After Barbara's death in 1866, David married Theresa Lacy in 1869. They had one daughter. Teresa seems to have been dissatisfied with life in the country so sometime after the birth of their daughter, she moved back to Okolona. David was living alone when he died sometime between 1890 and 1900. He was buried next to Barbara Jane. He has an unmarked grave. But Barbara has a monument.

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The grave is unmarked, next to his first wife Barbara.

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