John started out poor in Tippah County, Mississippi, and moved to North Texas around 1890 and lived in a dugout tent for a year. He lost his first wife and remarried which did not produce offspring. He bought up land through the profits of his dry goods store and was wealthy when engineers found that the area had an oil bounty. The oil boom in and around Burkburnett made Hardin likely a billionaire in today's worth. The Hardins lived in a modest home in Burkburnett and donated large sums to the universities and schools mentioned along with many others too numerous to count. By the early 1930's both of them passed on and are buried in modest graves in the Burkburnett cemetery.
Wokeness, is destroying another altruistic legacy.