Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas Page: 662 of 894
762 p., [172] leaves of plates : ill., ports. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this book.
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
563
RUFUS HARDY,
CORSICANA.Judge Rufus Hardy was born in Monroe County,
Miss., December 16, 1855.
His father, George Washington Hardy, was a
native of the same State and county, and was one
of a family of seven sons and seven daughters.
The family were, as their name implies, a hardy,
meritorious race. By their indomitable energy,
good judgment and sterling integrity, they all
became prosperous. Though none of them sought
any public position, they were all Democrats of
the old school, believing that every citizen should
stand on an equal footing before the law, asking
no favors, and demanding only an open field and
a fair chance in the race of life. Three of the
brothers came to Texas, and settled finally in
Brazos County, where they owned large estates in
land and negroes. These brothers were G. W.,
A. W., and Henderson Hardy. G. W. Hardy was
the oldest and the wealthiest. He was a good
liver; his home was the seat of hospitality before
the war, and in everything he was the typical
Southern gentleman and planter-proud, generous,
patriotic, and devoted to his friends and
family. Being a cripple, besides being exempt on
account of his age, and the act exempting owners
of a certain number of slaves, he did not enter the
Confederate army, but his devotion to and zeal
for the cause of the South in her struggle for
a separate, independent government, was not surpassed
by that of any soldier in the ranks, and all
during the war his cribs were open and free to the
wife or widow of any soldier who was fighting, or
had died for his country. His confidence in the
ultimate triumph of the South was supreme, and
caused him to invest, even in the last years of the
war, all that he had in negro property, so that
when the end came he was left without a dollar
and without even a home. He lived twelve years
after the war, with health and spirit greatly broken,
and died in 1877, leaving only a small property,
accumulated after the war between the States.
Judge Hardy's mother, prior to her marriage,
was Miss Pauline J. Whittaker, born and reared in
Maury County, Tenn. She, too, was one of a
family of seven sons and seven daughters. The
Whittakers were a prominent family in Middle
Tennessee. The old family home, a brick twostory
building, where the mother of Judge Hardy
spent her girlhood days, is still standing, but ithas passed into strangers' hands. Mrs. Hardy
(nee Whittaker) is still living, and spends her
time with her four children.
Judge Hardy has one brother, D. W. Hardy, of
Navasota, who now owns, besides his home in that
place, valuable farms in the Brazos bottom, near by.
Judge HIardy has two sisters, Mrs. T. J. Knox
and Mrs. S. Steele, who also live at Navasota. Mr.
Steele owns a very fine farm in the Brazos valley and
Mr. Knox a farm near Navasota.
The subject of this memoir received such education
as the private country schools in Texas afforded
in the old days, when the maxim " spare the rod and
spoil the child " was still held good. In his seventeenth
year, partly with money earned by himself
and partly with money furnished by his elder brother,
D.W. Hardy, and his father, he was enabled to enter
Summerville Institute, a long-established private
school in Noxubee County, Miss., where he spent
one year, during the presidencyof Thomas S. Gathright,
afterwards the first president of the Texas
Agricultural and Mechanical College, at Bryan.
Later he spent two years at the} University of
Georgia, at Athens, one year in the collegiate department
and one year in the law department. He
returned home in June, 1875, and began the practice
of law at Navasota, in January, 1876, when
less than twenty-one years of age. He moved
thence to Corsicana in February, 1878, and has
since resided in that city.
In February, 1881, he married Miss Felicia E.
Peck, daughter of Capt. Wm. M. and Mrs. Nancy
Forbes Peck, of Fairfield, Texas. Capt. Peck was
a Tennesseean by birth and his family have been
represented on the bench of the Supreme Court of
that State. Mrs. Peck (nee Forbes), came from a
fine old family of the good State of Alabama.
Capt. Peck bore the commission of Captain in the
Confederate army, having raised a company of
Freestone County boys in 1861 to fight for the
Southern cause. After the war he came home,
like thousands of others, to begin life, as it were,
anew. He was a man of exceptional energy
and capacity, of intellectual culture and natural
refinement, a polished gentleman of the old
school and successful in everything he undertook.
In November, 1880, Judge Hardy was elected
County Attorney of Navarro County, and was reelected
in 1882. In 1884 the office of District
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Brown, John Henry. Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, book, 1880~; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6725/m1/662/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.