My Genealogy Hound

Robert Hardie, a successful agriculturist, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. June 9, 1835, and his education was limited to the common schools. At the age of ten he began feeding a press in a printing office in the city, and arose to the position of pressman. Having enlisted in the British army and getting very tired of the same he decided to take “French leave,” and in 1855 came to America. In 1856 he came west, and began his career as a railroad man, assisting in the construction of a part of the Iron Mountain Railroad. While braking on a freight on this road he tried to get up between two cars, slipped and fell and barely escaped with his life, but not without some injury to his person, his left arm being cut off between the elbow and shoulder. Since that time, with the exception of about four years, he has been watchman and track walker, and has been in the employ of that company for twenty-six years. In 1861 he was taken prisoner and ordered to be shot, but by some happy chance escaped. The same year he married Miss Letha A. Jones, a native of Virginia, who bore him ten children, three sons and seven daughters. His first wife having died in 1878, he married, the following year, Miss Lucinda Humphrey, a native of North Carolina, who came to Missouri in 1858. Three children were the result of this union. Mrs. Hardie is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as was also the first wife. Mr. Hardie was reared in the Free Church of Scotland, and in politics is a conservative Democrat. In 1871 he settled on his present property, which consists of eighty-three acres, and has been quite successful considering the disadvantages under which he has labored. During the twenty-four years he has worked on the railroad he has not lost a day.