LIEUTENANT COLONEL FRANKLIN ALLEN HARDIN.
Franklin Allen Hardin was born in Adams County, Ohio, October 11, 1830. In the Spring of 1843. he with his parents came to Wayne County, Indiana, settling near Centreville. At the early age of sixteen, with such qualifications as only a common school education afforded, he resolved on the Christian ministry as the business of his life, and was admitted to the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he continued his labors until the beginning of the Civil War.
The North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was held in New Castle, in April, 1860, and at that time the Reverend Franklin A. Hardin was designated and appointed Pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New Castle. At the Conference held in April. 1861, he was reappointed to the same charge. When the Civil War began, the Reverend Hardin was very active in encouraging enlistments and in assisting in the organization of the first companies that volunteered from the central part of Henry County. So great was his activity in this direction that he came to be called, “The fighting parson.’* When the 36th Indiana Infantry was organized, at the especial request of its Colonel, William Grose, the Reverend Hardin was designated as Chaplain of the regiment, but before he could accept this position, he. with the Reverend J. W. T. McMullen. also of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the urgent instance of Governor Morton, undertook the organization of the 57th Indiana Infantry, the regiment which immediately succeeded the 36th in old Camp Wayne, Richmond. Indiana. McMullen became Colonel and Hardin. Lieutenant Colonel, of the regiment, as is set forth in the foregoing roster and history of the regiment.
Unschooled in the art of war, and associated with officers and soldiers. scarcely one of whom ever before even so much as drilled in a company, the task was a very difficult one; but he continued with the regiment through the long campaign from Louisville to Pittsburg Landing. Corinth. Tuscumbia, McMinnville, and back to Louisville. There he asked to be relieved on account of impaired health. He had become devotedly attached to the regiment and it was a great trial to him to sever his relation with such a noble body of men.
Shortly after his return home, he was called to the pastorate of a church in Chicago, to which place he removed in the Spring of 1865 and where he now resides. He is seventy four years old but continues his ministerial labors as zealously and acceptably as ever. He holds sacred the memory of the soldiers with whom he enlisted and wants to meet all of them on parade:
“When the General has come
With sound of trumpet, not of drum,
And when the well dressed ranks shall stand
In full review, at his right hand.”
Source; Hazard’s History Of Henry County, Indiana; Vol. 1; 1822-1906; George Hazard
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