Hardin County

One of the Hardins this county honors came to Texas under an indictment. According to the Handbook of Texas, William Hardin's brothers Augustine and Benjamin Franklin shot two men in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1825, and William was indicted with them that December. By 1827 he was in what is now Liberty County, having escaped Tennessee's extradition arrests at San Antonio and again at Nacogdoches. He later served as alcalde at Anahuac and died of yellow fever in Galveston in 1839. The county's first court met outdoors, under a large dogwood.

What the plaque says

Hardin County Created January 22, 1858. Organized August 9, 1858. Named in honor of the Hardins of Liberty County. Five brothers-- Benjamin Watson, Augustine Blackburn, William, Frank and Milton A. who came to Texas in 1825. County seat, Hardin, 1858-1887. Kountze, since.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Big Thicket National Preserve — 7.5 mi
  Start at the Kountze visitor center, where rangers sort the preserve's scattered units for you, and learn why Congress made this 1974 string of pearls the country's first national preserve.
• Village Creek State Park — 13 mi
  A 2,466-acre state park on one of the few free-flowing creeks in Texas, with a launch for the Village Creek Paddling Trail, boat rentals and sandy-upland trails in the Big Thicket.
• McFaddin-Ward House — 23 mi
  A Beaux-Arts Colonial Revival mansion finished in 1906 and lived in by one family for 75 years, with free guided tours of three furnished floors, the carriage house and gardens.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 27 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Courthouses of Hardin County — steps away
• General Braxton Bragg, C. S. A. — steps away
• Old Hardin — 2.2 mi
• Richard E. Jackson — 7.5 mi