My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM H. HARDESTY, editor and proprietor of the Indiana Pocket, is a native of Gallatin County, Ky., born December 29, 1840, the youngest but one of four children born to the marriage of Richard Hardesty and Amelia Rudd. In 1856 the father removed from Kentucky to Missouri, and there engaged in merchandising. When Kansas City was in its infancy Richard Hardesty removed to that point, and erected the first business building back from the levee. He has resided there to the present time, and in the combined pursuits of farming and merchandising has amassed a comfortable fortune. Our subject’s mother dying about the year 1843, his father several years afterward married Jane Peak, by whom he became the father of four children, only two of whom are now living. William H. Hardesty passed his youth with his parents in his native county, receiving such education as only the common schools afforded. In 1857 he went to Kansas City, clerking in his father’s store a year and in a drug store until 1860, when he went to Denver, Col., with the tide of gold hunters drifting to that place. Shortly thereafter he returned to Kansas City, and until the breaking out of the war traveled through the South. From Memphis, Tenn., he went to Cincinnati, Ohio, as a Southern refugee, and enlisting in Company I, First Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, served his country faithfully three years through hard fought battles and campaigns, being twice slightly wounded, and was then honorably discharged, wearing a sergeant’s chevrons. After the war he was engaged in merchandising at Jeffersonville, Ind., a short time, and for a number of years thereafter ran a sleeping car between Louisville and New Orleans, on what was called the “Rip Van Winkle Line.” He then merchandised in Kentucky until the spring of 1877, when he came to Rockport, Ind., which has since been his home. For the last seven years he has been very closely connected with the business interests of the place, and is at present operating one of the best drug stores of Rockport, in addition to looking after the best interests of the Pocket. In politics he is a Republican, and an active, influential worker in the interests of his party, and a member of the G. A. R. To his marriage with Mollie V. Rush, which was solemnized in 1868, three children have been born: Rudd, James C. R. and William H. The parents are Christian and Baptist respectively.