Alvin Hardin

The Hardin migration from Kentucky to Lincoln's Illinois

Brant's Hindman maternal line runs through Kentucky. Alvin Hardin was born 22 August 1836 in Bath County, Kentucky, to Robert Wesley Hardin and Philadelphia Baird. He grew up in Nicholas County, Kentucky. By 1860 the Hardin family had moved north to Menard County, Illinois, the Lincoln country where Abraham Lincoln practiced law on the Eighth Judicial Circuit. On 12 January 1859, in Greenview, Alvin married Minerva Mildred Gaines, who had also been born in Kentucky to Joseph P. Gaines and Eliza Bell Metier. Nine children, the eldest William Wallace Hardin, born 18 November 1859. Alvin spent the rest of his life as a Greenview farmer. He died there 15 February 1904; Minerva died at Sweet Water, in the same county, 16 December 1917. They are buried side by side at Indian Point Cemetery, Athens, in Menard County. William Wallace lived 1859 to 1944; his daughter Bertha Rae Hardin (1883 to 1972) married Boyden Erwin Hindman in 1907; their son Boyden William (1908) married Barbara F Rice in Chicago 11 April 1936, bridging the Hindman and Rice lines.