Hardins of Baylor County

To say that a family is cursed is extreme. To say they have bad luck, for some may be appropriate, but when it lasts for generations, what else would you call it? 

W.B. Hardin came to Baylor County first. When the Comanches came in and ran every one of the land grantees back to where they came from, Hardin left too. He came back in 1875, a year after the last Comanche killing in the county. It is odd that W.B. died at the hands of a neighbor over a steer in 1889. There aren’t many details, but the neighbor was never even tried. Unlucky.

His son Leonard struggled to support the family after his father’s passing, and with the help of his twin sisters, Odessa and Elvira, they made it work. Odessa and Elvira both married and moved away; one went to Paint Rock, the other to Abilene. That didn't last. One husband died in the Great War and the other died when a horse fell on him. Both were widowed by the age of 40 and moved back to the family land. Unlucky.

Leonard had a son, William, who had learned the business along-side his dad and helped bring the family profits along.  When Leonard Hardin’s wagon team came pulling up to his house in the spring of 1947, his family thought it was strange. He’d just gone to Megargel for the supplies that were in the wagon. They backtracked toward town and found him where the horse team had thrown him. He was about 10 feet off the trail on a curve. Maybe a rattlesnake spooked the horses, maybe he lost his balance, but either way he had a broken neck. Unlucky.

When William died, Odessa and Elvira had tired of being unlucky. William was as close as a son to both. He never drank or smoked. He was pious as a saint and was deacon of the church. When he had his accident on the tractor, that was it for the Hardin sisters. 

By then Odessa and Elvira were in their 80’s. They liked their whiskey, they liked their front porch, and they liked their freedom to shoot from it when they pleased. They’d earned it. The brand new ’64 Pontiac that William had so loved became their target. It still sits there with all the polka dots they gave it. The old folks around Round Timber still talk about Odessa and Elvira to their children’s grandchildren with an odd reverence only small town Texas old folks can know.