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. 在他们生命的最后几年, they chose to oversee the distribution of their prosperity for the betterment of others and the sustainment of Christian causes spread across 德州. 从牧场获得可观的财产和收入, 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. 1875年，他陪同父亲访问约翰逊县, 德州, 并选择在这个州度过余生. 在约翰逊县, 哈丁在农场工作, 在学校教书，并娶了苏珊·科迪利亚·亚当斯, 以前的学生. 这对年轻夫妇在克莱本附近的一个农场定居下来, 很快他们就有了一个女孩，取名为多维. 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. 为了偿还贷款的财产, 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.

在他们到达伯克伯内特地区后不久, 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, 在哈丁的房产上运作.  By the mid-1920s their wealth had grown to over $5 million ($70 million in 2014 purchasing power).

在发现石油后发了横财之后, 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, 退休未偿还的公立学校债券, 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, 中西部州立大学的前身.

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,  阿比林基督教学院(现为阿比林基督教大学), 位于布朗伍德的霍华德佩恩学院(现为霍华德佩恩大学), 以及达拉斯的巴克纳浸信会儿童之家. 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 University. 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.”

玛丽·哈丁于1935年9月5日去世，享年76岁. 虽然约翰·哈丁在伯克伯内特有家, 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 University to recognize the philanthropy and leadership in giving provided by 约翰G. 和玛丽·凯瑟琳·哈丁.