约翰G. 哈丁

恩人

John and Mary 哈丁 would spend their married life together wisely investing their resources and energies in creating a vast fortune. In the waning years of their lives, they chose to oversee the distribution of their prosperity for the betterment of others and the sustainment of Christian causes spread across 德州. Having achieved substantial property and revenue from ranching, 贷款和, 晚些时候, 石油发现收入, the 哈丁s joyfully gave away their accumulated wealth to endow orphanages, 大学和医院, to alleviate church debts and to even provide for an electric light plant for their neighbors.

约翰Gresham 哈丁 was born on August 26, 1854, in Tippah County, Mississippi.  The 哈丁 family moved to Tennessee, where John 哈丁 lived until the age of twenty-one. In 1875 he accompanied his father on a visit to Johnson County, 德州, and chose to remain in the state for the rest of his life. 在约翰逊县, 哈丁在农场工作, taught school and married Susan Cordelia Adams, 以前的学生. The young couple settled on a farm near Cleburne, soon becoming parents of a girl whom they named Dovie. In 1879, 哈丁 moved his family to northern Clay County (晚些时候 Wichita County) where the couple had purchased a 127-acre homestead at the price of one dollar an acre near what would become Burkburnett, 德州. In order to pay back the loan for the property, 哈丁 gathered buffalo bone from the prairie and hauled them to Wichita Falls where he received fifteen dollars for each ton.

两年了, John and Cordelia 哈丁 lived in a simple dugout – a twelve by fourteen foot hole in the ground covered over with logs and sod – while Mr. 哈丁 cultivated the land and operated a general store patronized by Kiowa and Comanche Indians from Indian Territory, as well as by newly-arrived homesteaders and cowboys from the nearby Four Sixes Ranch.

Soon after their arrival in the Burkburnett area, the 哈丁s’ young daughter died just one day shy of her third birthday in 1881. Two years 晚些时候, Cordelia 哈丁 would pass away at the age of twenty-one. In 1888, John 哈丁 would marry for a second time when he and Mary Catherine Funk of Harrisonburg, 弗吉尼亚人结婚了.

The 哈丁s used profits accrued from the small store to begin buying land in the area and by the turn of the century their holdings totaled 4,000英亩. They also began to loan money to finance home purchases for other residents. By 1915, farming and moneylending increased their fortune to more than $1 million. The 哈丁s landholdings lay in an area that would become the Burkburnett oilfield in 1918. 有一段时间, 多达100个井, 有的产3个,000桶/天, operated on the 哈丁 property.  By the mid-1920s their wealth had grown to over $5 million ($70 million in 2014 purchasing power).

Following the windfall from the discovery of oil, the 哈丁s released the mortgages they held on an estimated one-fourth of properties located in Burkburnett. The couple helped fund the construction of a variety of churches in Burkburnett, 捐赠土地建设游乐场, retired the outstanding public school bonds, and financed a local electric power plant which they deeded to the community. The 哈丁s also set aside their homestead to be given to the city of Burkburnett for use as a city park. In addition to providing financial aid to numerous individual college students, 1936年，他们捐赠了400美元,000 towards the construction of a four-year college in Wichita Falls thus establishing 哈丁 Junior College, 后来的哈丁学院, the predecessor of Midwestern State University.

Mr. 和夫人. 哈丁 established trust funds for a number of educational and charitable institutions including Baylor Female College (renamed to Mary 哈丁-Baylor University) in Belton,  Abilene Christian College (now Abilene Christian University), Howard Payne College (now Howard Payne University) in Brownwood, and Buckner Baptist Children’s 首页 in Dallas. In 1934 John and Mary 哈丁 provided a life-saving gift to Simmons University of Abilene. 怀着深深的感激之情, the board of trustees voted to rename the school to 哈丁-Simmons大学. When asked why the couple supported Christian schools, John 哈丁 said:

“We are inclined to believe that Christian education of the right type is the greatest work for good that can be done. It is foundation work and the basis upon which good citizenship grows.”

Mary 哈丁 died on September 5, 1935 at the age of seventy-six. Although John 哈丁 maintained a home in Burkburnett, he spent the last year of his life in Baylor University Hospital in Dallas where he died on December 16, 1937.

It is the high honor of 哈丁-Simmons大学 to recognize the philanthropy and leadership in giving provided by 约翰G. 和玛丽·凯瑟琳·哈丁.