Clemson University - Taps Yearbook (Clemson, SC)

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MAJOR MARK BERNARD HARDIN Major Mark Bernard Hardin, how Professor of Chemistry in Clemson College, S. C, was born at Alexandria. Va.. August 14, 1838. He is the son of Lauresten B. Hardin, Clerk and Registrar of the Navy Department from the administration of Andrew Jackson to the time of his death in 1858. Major Hardin was reared to the age of sixteen in Washington. D. C. and in 1854 entered the Virginia Military Institute, from which he was graduated in 1858. Imme- diately after his graduation he was appointed an assistant professor in this insti- tution and in 1860 was appointed adjunct professor, in which capacity he continued to act until the beginning of the war. During his connection with this institution in the ante-bellum days he was intimately associated with General Stonewall Jackson, both as his student and as his co-professor. A warm friendship sprung up between the two ; and this relation continued until the death of that gallant chieftain in 1863. In the beginning of the war Mr. Hardin was offered a position on General Jackson ' s staff ; but this he declined, preferring the line. Accordingly he joined the Thirty-third Virginia Regiment as acting Major, and fought with his command in Jackson ' s brigade in the First Battle of Manassas. In October, 1861, he was appointed Major of Artillery, in the active volunteer forces of Vir- ginia, and assigned to duty at Craney Island, where he remained until the evacu- ation of Norfolk, on May in. 1 s ( ; • . While on this island he was an eye-witness of all the stirring scenes enacted in that vicinity, and among other historic happen- ings the destruction of the Cumberland and the Congress, and the fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor. In June. 1862, he was appointed Major of Ar- tillery in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, and assigned to duty as Commander of the 18th Virginia Battalion of Heavy Artillery, in the defences of Richmond. He continued in this capacity, being in charge of a considerable portion of the line, until the evacuation of Richmond. While in this service, in the fall of 1804, he was sent to Fort Harrison to take command of troops at Chafhn ' s Farm in the place of Major Dick Taylor, who had been captured. While here he was wounded in the left arm. He had received one wound prior to this in the Kilpatrick raid. When the evacuation of Richmond became a cer- tainty, his battalion was placed in Cruchfield ' s brigade. Custis Lee ' s division, for the retreat. In an effort to reach Gen. Robert E. Lee ' s army they were over- taken bv the enemy at Sailor ' s Creek, where a desperate battle ensued, in which General Cruchfield was killed and his entire brigade captured. Major Hardin was taken a prisoner to Old Capitol Prison, Washington. On the evening of his arrival there President Lincoln was assassinated, and this created such intense feeling that, for safety, he, together with the other Confederate officers, was taken

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COL. M. B. HAKDIN

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to Johnson ' s Island, Lake Erie, where he was held a prisoner of war until July 3, 18(55. For two years after the close of the war he was an analytical chemist in New York City. In 1867 he returned to the Virginia Military Institute as full Professor of Chemistry, which position he held until 1890. In October of that year he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in Clemson College, S. C, which position he still holds. He is also Chief Chemist of the South Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, located at the college. He was elected a member of the American Chemical Society upon its organi- zation, in 1876, and has continued a member ever since. In 1886 he was elected a member of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York (which is now the New York Academy of Sciences), and became a corresponding member of the same society in July, 1897. He was married August 26, 1869, to Miss Mary M. Payne, of Warrenton, Va., who has since died, leaving eight children, four boys and four girls, to his care. 3 os£r£ Vt£T v ■ f ivirru iTW U. r ov 0S