My Genealogy Hound

ISAAC HARDY (deceased) was born in the town of Monkton, Addison County, Vt., September 22, 1803. His parents were farmers, and he followed the same avocation until his twenty-first year. He had few educational advantages, and those were confined to a few winters’ schooling. Being one of the younger sons in a large family, and ambitious to strike out for himself, he proposed to relinquish all claims on his father’s estate to his elder brothers in consideration of a team of horses, harness and a wagon and a $5 bill. With that capital and a light heart he faced the future, first going to St. Albans, Vt., where for a time he trafficked in furs. From there he went to Quebec, Canada, and then to Three Rivers, engaging in logging, and after a season’s work that brought a fair measure of success, moved to Prescott, Canada, and engaged in building public works, for which he was eminently qualified. His contracts included the building of a lock and rock work on the Redion Canal, and he was thus engaged until the winter of 1839-40. He not only accumulated a great deal of money for those times, but contact with the busy world had made him a self-reliant man in every sense. That winter, the sleighing being good, he drove across Michigan to Chicago, and on to Lockport, Ill., to see William Gooding, the chief engineer of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, which was then being constructed, to learn what inducements there were for himself and other contractors to come on and bid for work. He returned to Canada, reporting so favorably that on his return in the spring he was accompanied by George Barnett, George Steele and several others, all of whom had secured contracts on the canal.

Mr. Hardy’s first job was rock work at Romeo, later receiving the contract to build the steam boat basin connecting the Illinois River with the canal terminus at La Salle. His bid had caused the failure of one contractor, but in two years he finished the basin, with a profit of $117,000. In the meantime he had bid for Lock No. 1, at Bridgeport, upon the identical figures that had caused a former contractor to suspend. His friends in both instances predicted failure, and demonstrated to their own satisfaction that such must follow at the lock, predicated on the fact that the stone had to be waggoned from Lemont. He obviated that by securing the same in Cleveland, Ohio, already to place, bringing it around the Lakes.

In January, 1841, Mr. Hardy married Miss Mary Adaline Cutting, a daughter of Joseph and Fanny (Hatch) Cutting, of Norwich, Vt. About this time he purchased a farm across the Vermilion River, near La Salle, for his early taste for fine stock had increased with the passing years. He built the first line of canal boats, seven in number, and also had his own towing stock, and a steamer on the Illinois River to tow to and from St. Louis. He established a dock in Chicago, built a large grain elevator at La Salle (where he had a lumber yard), as well as at other points between Chicago and St. Louis. In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, railroads were few in Illinois, and the greater part of both the freight and passenger traffic between the south and east moved by the way of the canal and steamers on the Illinois River. In 1849 he built a large hotel, for those times, at La Salle, called the Hardy House. He moved to Chicago, where he lived a few years, investing in city and near-by acre property, accumulating hundreds of acres, all of which is now within the city limits. In 1851 he removed to La Salle, and there passed his declining years, dying September 14, 1864. Isaac Hardy was a typical New Englander— stood six feet, three inches, and weighed about two hundred and sixty pounds—and was broadened by contact with busy times, large ventures and association with intellectual men. He numbered among his long list of friends such men as Judge McLean, of Ohio, Abbott Lawrence and Honest John Davis, of Massachusetts, Judge Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Dick Yates, Gen. William Thornton, Lyle Smith, Col. E. D. Taylor, William B. Ogden, Alexander Campbell and others, and was well known throughout the Mississippi Valley. He was of marked individuality, with a warm heart for all in distress. His friends could always command him, and while his enemies had to take a tongue lashing, yet wrongs were easily overlooked and forgotten. Physical and mental courage he had without limit. He was a man of great foresight and determination, and had a strong will. General Grant in an interview said: “I never met him but once, but realized that he was one of the most remarkable men I had ever known—what he undertook he would finish.”

He was first a Henry Clay Whig in politics, and afterward a Republican. In 1861 Governor Yates tendered him the Commissary Generalship of the state, but he refused it on account of poor health. His home life was as sweet as the days were long. He had a family of fourteen children, seven of whom, with his wife, survive him. They are: Charles Isaac, Abbott Lawrence, Kate B., Jessie L., Fanny J., Campbell and Theodore Burton.