On this site interested kin can help with the giant Hardin jigsaw puzzle. At its launch the site’s information is speculative in places, with the hope that collaboration will bring more certainty. Start at the links at left. They’re generally chronological, and the names under each location tab are generally of men who settled as young adults in those places. Unproved but likely fits have a yellow background (caution). More speculative fits and families believed unrelated are shown with red backgrounds.
The haplotype i1a Hardins -- the subject of this site -- are a distinct family, revealed by spotty decendants’ Y-DNA testing. (They are completely unrelated to many other Hardins, including Colonel Joseph Hardin of the Revolutionary War, the founders of Texas, or the 19th century Texas serial killer John Wesley Hardin.) This English group originated in the vicinity of the James River and Brunswick County and migrated into Granville County, North Carolina. William T. Hardin left his father in Pendleton District, South Carolina to settle in Alabama with two of his brothers.
In their various settlemenets these Hardins sometimes lived among other Hardins completely unrelated.
For convenience I will call the author’s (Travis Hardin’s) family the “Pendleton Hardins.” Those who moved to straddle the Floyd County, Georgia and Cherokee County, Alabama line, Oran Hardin called the Plumnelly Hardins. The author’s ancestors lived in Chatham County (Old Orange), NC before moving to Pendleton District, South Carolina. The Pendleton patriach was Gabriel Hardin. From Pendleton and Laurens Districts one band of brothers migrated mainly to Floyd County, Ga. and Cherokee County, Ala. Other Pendleton Hardins settled in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Another relation named Gabriel Hardin arrived in Lunenberg County, Va. in the 1750s, later leaving for Moore (old Cumberland) county, North Carolina.
What is known with certainty from the DNA tests are that the Plumnelly Hardins are the same family as John R. Hardin of Rowan County, NC, John Hardin of Washington County, Indiana, and Gabriel Hardin of Moore County, North Carolina.