Edwin Ruthven Hardesty

E R HARDESTY a farmer and stock raiser of Johnson county was born in Gallatin county Kentucky in 1837 the eldest of four children born to Richard and Permelia Rudd Hardesty natives also of Kentucky

Our subject came to Dallas county Texas in 1855 and the first year clerked in a drug store in the city of that name

In 1856 he rented land in Dallas county two years later returned to his old home in Kentucky and then went to Jackson county Missouri where his father had settled stopping in Kansas City then a small town of about 600 population

Mr Hardesty was engaged in farming in that State until the breaking out of the late war when in June 1861 he enlisted in the Confederate service as a member of General Price's bodyguards and served until the close of the war He participated in the battles of Corinth and Iuka and during the last eighteen months of the struggle he was in secret service and made many trips from the headquarters in Arkansas to Mississippi and Alabama He was never captured and received only a flesh wound in the left arm in a skirmish near Iuka Mississippi He was discharged at Gainesville Alabama after which he spent a few months in Kentucky and then went to Winston county Mississippi and engaged in farming

Mr Hardesty settled in Johnson county in 1880 on his present farm of 120 acres of land to which he has since added until he now owns 353 acres and is engaged in general farming and stockraising

Mr Hardesty is a prominent Alliance man of this county and he and his wife and four children are members of the Baptist Church of Lane Prairie

He was married in 1867 to Miss Emily A Ball a native of Mississippi and they have had twelve children viz Lou who died at the age of nineteen years Mary widow of WN Anderson Richard James Joseph Lavenia Ida Addie Thomas Willie and George

A Memorial and Biographical History of Johnson County, Texas PG. 323-324