My Genealogy Hound

JOHN M. HARDENBURG is an honest, industrious and hard-working man, who has successfully conducted several farms, making money out of each, and after a more than average life-time, spent in agricultural pursuits, has, in the sere and yellow leaf of life, turned his attention to horticulture and enjoys it, for it is healthful, keeps one in touch with advancing methods, and is pecuniarily compensating for the time and labor employed. At least four generations of the family of Hardenburg have been Americans by birth, so that the more moderate Teutonic blood neutralizes the swifter and more nervous fluid which pulsates through the veins of an American, whose ancestors peopled Albion or Scotia. The paternal grandfather of John M. Hardenburg was a native of Ulster county, New York, being born in 1775. He became a farmer and removed to Oneida county, N. Y., locating on a farm there, but not being satisfied with his environments, he went to Tompkins county, where he bought a farm, which he a few years after sold and moved to Chautauqua, this county, where he purchased a farm, which he subsequently sold to his son Volkert, father of John M., about 1835. It is located nearly four miles from Mayville and is now owned by Nelson Crandall. He married Jane Vedder, by whom he had six children: Maria, who married Jacob Mowers; Betsy, who married Israel Denman; John; Judith, who married Adam Hoffman; Volkert, father of John M.; Cornelius, whose wife was Adeline Tucker; and James. The father of these children died in 1840, and the mother in 1858. The maternal grandfather of John M. Hardenburg, John Miller, was a life-long resident of Oneida county. New York. The father of John M. was born in Oneida county. New York, January 25, 1799, and came to this county in 1834. He purchased a fifty acre farm three miles east of Mayville, worked it a short time and selling it, bought the farm of his father above alluded to and lived there two years. Thence he removed to the south-western part of Stockton, this county, where he bought a farm of one hundred and sixty-seven acres and continued investing in land until he became possessed of three hundred acres. He now lives in Portland, Chautauqua county, a hale, hearty and happy nonogenarian. He married, October 4, 1818, Susan Miller, daughter of John Miller, of Oneida county. New York, by whom he had six children, three sons and three daughters, of whom Jane A., the first-born, married George Munger, a blacksmith in Portland, this county; Jacob is a farmer and dealer in cattle in Westfield, and married Antoinette Hassett, Dec. 30, 1851; Catharine, now dead, married Thomas Ralph, a farmer in Stockton; Cornelia, also deceased, married Stephen Reinhart, January 9, 1850. He is a farmer in Stockton, this county; and Henry, a farmer in Westfield, married Diana Pane. The mother of these children died August 1st, 1868, and was buried at Westfield.

John M. Hardenburg, a son of Volkert and Susan (Miller) Hardenburg, was born in Oneida county, New York, October 4th, 1823, and was educated in the common schools of Stockton, which he continued to attend, but only a few months in each year, until he was twenty-four years old, when he rented a farm in Stockton, where he remained two years and then bought a farm of one hundred acres, which he cultivated a brief time and sold it, only to buy another comprising one hundred and fifteen acres, on which he remained fourteen years. He then disposed of it and removed to Portland, where he purchased a smaller farm, some sixty acres, and lived three years. He bought, occupied and sold these farms successively and after the disposal of the third, he removed to Westfield, where he conducted a dairy farm for one year. Returning to Portland he purchased a farm of one hundred and sixty acres and occupied it sixteen years, after which, he sold it and came to Fredonia, where he now owns seven acres in the village on which he raises choice grapes. In religion he is a member of the Baptist church.

John M. Hardenburg was married to Julia A. Denton, September 12, 1848. She was a daughter of Fowler and Sophia (Colwell) Denton (her father being a farmer in Stockton), and by her had two sons and two daughters, of whom Sophia, the eldest, married Homer Burr, a farmer in Portland, the union resulting in eight children; Medora married A. J. Walker, a grape-grower in Portland, and they have one child; Warren died in infancy; and Fowler Denton, a grape-grower in Portland, who married Lizzie Burrows, and they have three children.