Hardin County
Kountze, Hardin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Hardin County was created on January 22, 1858, and organized that August, taking its name from the Hardin family of neighboring Liberty County. Five Hardin brothers—Benjamin Watson, Augustine Blackburn, William, Frank, and Milton—had come to Texas in 1825, among the early Anglo-American settlers of the region. The county seat sat at the town of Hardin until 1887, when it moved to Kountze.
Why it matters
The county's founding honors one of the pioneering families of Stephen F. Austin's colonial era, tying local government directly to the first wave of Anglo settlement in Texas.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Watson Hardin
- · William Hardin
- · Milton A. Hardin
Related events
- · Creation of Hardin County
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Courthouses of Hardin County
Kountze, TX
Since Hardin County was created in 1858, its seat of government has occupied a succession of buildings, beginning with a two-story log structure that burned around 1886 and took the county's early records with it. A frame courthouse followed in 1887—famously built around its safe—then a domed 1905 masonry building of West Texas stone and imported St. Louis brick, and finally a modern facility in 1958. Remarkably, the little 1887 building still stands near the square as law offices.
Old Hardin
Kountze, TX
Founded in 1859 as the first seat of newly created Hardin County, Old Hardin thrived until the Sabine & East Texas Railroad bypassed it in 1881, a fatal turn for many 19th-century towns. A suspicious fire destroyed its courthouse in 1886, and the next year voters moved the county seat to Kountze, which sat on the rail line. Old Hardin faded as the railroad town rose in its place.
Spell Cemetery
Beaumont, TX
Set aside by the Marble family in the early 1870s, this small graveyard holds burials reaching back to the Civil War years, beginning with Martha Marble. The land passed to a daughter and son-in-law whose family name it still carries, and later generations formally recorded it as a cemetery in county deeds. Descendants organized an association to tend the historic ground.
Prater Cemetery
Beaumont, TX
Prater Cemetery grew from a family burial ground that Edwin Prater formalized in 1894, buying a half-acre from his daughter and son-in-law to serve his descendants 'forever'—though travelers who died passing through had already been laid to rest there, and his infant granddaughter Seawillow Ballard was buried in 1888. Used chiefly by the Prater, Collier, Ballard, and Odom families, it holds Confederate veterans among its graves, including a ferry operator on the Neches River. Overgrown and nearly forgotten, it was rediscovered in 1968 and cleaned up by a Beaumont Boy Scout troop in 1976.