Treasure Chest Thursday – The Bird Hardy Family Record

Well here, I’ve talked about this record often enough in other posts (just choose the tag “Bird Hardy” and you’ll get a list). These are scans of what I call the Bird Hardy Family Record. It begins with listing the birth date of Bird Hardy and Tiercy Hardy and then listing the birth dates of all their children. After skipping some space, the page chronicles the death of Tiercy Hardy in 1843, Bird in 1870, then Elizabeth Tyer’s in 1846 (who was the mother of Tiercy). It goes on to list the deaths of four of Bird & Tiercy’s children on the front. On the back of the paper, it lists the deaths of two more children, twins Joshua & Thomas Hardy. Written in pencil in another handwriting is noted the death of Thomas’ wife Nancy. The final listing in ink in yet another handwriting notes the death of Martha S. Hardy who was the wife of Joshua.



Bird Hardy family record page 1

This paper was given to my in 1994 by my father’s cousin, Norman Vaughan. Norman lived with his mother, Ruby Hardy Vaughan, my grandmother’s sister, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Norman sent this to me along with other photographs and memorabilia that had been among his mother’s things. I had visited Norman and Aunt Ruby several times in the preceding years and had asked them what they knew about the family history. Knowing of my interest, Norman sent these things to me shortly after Aunt Ruby passed away. It wasn’t but a couple of years after that Norman developed stomach cancer and passed away himself.

I speculate that this information was taken from a family bible, probably Bird Hardy’s. Perhaps since there were several branches of the family interested in the original bible, this information was copied down by my branch (Joshua Hardy & his wife Martha, my second great-grandparents) for safe-keeping. It may have been copied just after Bird’s death before the bible may have been handed off to another family member. Bird’s death was recorded second in the death listing and out of sequence of the others; his was the second to the last date of occurrence on this side of the paper. It also appears that the very last entry on this page was written in a different ink. I think that this last entry and the others on the opposite side were written more contemporary to when these events occurred. Judging from other examples of Martha’s handwriting, my guess is that she was the one who wrote these down and kept track of it until her death which, although it states 1914 in this record, took place in 1915. Probably one of her daughters, Mary or Elizabeth, recorded Martha’s death there.

Bird Hardy family record page 2