Monday, October 13, 2008
1940 - The Legend of Jack Hardy
In 1940, everyone in Santa Fe knew young Jack Hardy from a series of articles in the Santa Fe New Mexican. Hardy, 19 and a Santa Fe High School senior, regularly produced articles covering club news, school dances and various assemblies at the High School as a stringer for the newspaper’s Capital Examiner section.
At Santa Fe High School, Jackson Hardy was an ideal student, collecting academic honors while busy with extracurricular activities. Smart, good-looking and popular, Jack would have made his parents proud except that he had no parents. Jack was an orphan and supported himself all through high school through a variety of odd jobs.
At graduation in May 1940, Jack Hardy was among an elite group of students receiving honors for scholastic achievement but Jack Hardy was the only student to win a grand prize – a full four-year scholarship to Harvard University. Within a few weeks, Jack’s singular achievement would pale when the astonishing truth about Jack Hardy was revealed. As it turned out, Jack Hardy did not exist and never did.
Jack Hardy was really Ernest Harding Jackson, a teen-age runaway whose odyssey began at age 14 in Belleville, Illinois. Young Ernest chafed at the limitations at the family farm run by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. James W. Jackson where Ernest and his younger brother Elmer spent long days in labor. One day, as a “prank,” Ernest decided to leave home and make his own way in the world.
He hitchhiked to Clay County, Arkansas where his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Holcomb, ran a small farm. He stayed over a year until a quarrel with his grandparents pushed him to leave.
Around 1938, Ernest headed to Kent, Texas with the intention of becoming a cowboy, even though he’d never even ridden a horse. He got on at a nearby ranch, giving the name of Jackson Harding but the trail boss, half deaf, heard it as “Jack Hardy” and the name stuck. In Texas, Jackson – now Jack Hardy and not yet 17 – tried to get back into high school, taking a job doing housework to earn room and board. After a while, a growling stomach and an itch to travel led him to abandon that plan and head further west.
In the spring of 1939, Jack Hardy wound up in Santa Fe where he took a job as a yard boy for Santa Fe magazine writer Dorothy Thomas. To make ends meet, Jack also worked odd jobs at various cafés, ranches and farms. Thomas inspired Jack to take up writing and, impressed with his work, Thomas wangled a job for Jack reporting school news at the Santa Fe New Mexican where stories under his byline appeared often during the 1939-1940 school year.
The revelations of Jack Hardy’s true identity first appeared in the St. Louis and Belleville newspapers after Jack wrote to his parents telling them of the scholarship and of his intention to visit them that summer. The Jacksons in Belleville, it was reported, were looking forward to the visit.
In the meantime, Jack was preparing to enter Harvard in the fall of 1940 under the name of Jack Hardy, a name he intended to keep. “I wanted to make my own way,” Jack told the New Mexican, “I think I have but now I am glad that the whole thing is out and I don’t have to pretend anymore. I just hope that they won’t take my scholarship away from me.”
There the record ends. No more is heard of Jack Hardy in Santa Fe or New Mexico. Whatever happened to Jack Hardy? Did he go on to complete his education at Harvard? A search of Harvard alumni discloses no Jack Hardy or Ernest Harding Jackson as a graduate after 1940. Was Jack Hardy caught up in a world war after December 1941? A wide search of military records yields no Jack Hardy or Ernest Harding Jackson, at least not one fitting Jack’s description. What happened to Jack Hardy?
The capacity for reinvention is celebrated in America, a nation created by men and women fleeing the limitations of the past, not once but many times as people pushed on to new frontiers. Recall Pilgrims leaving England for religious freedom, Spanish conversos escaping the Inquisition, Irish peasants seeking relief from famine and on and on. Once in America, pioneers pushed further west. One story claims that the slang word “git” originated in the practice of Midwesterners abandoning the family farm for the Texas frontier and scrawling the initials GIT onto fence posts, meaning “Going Into Texas.” F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously claimed that there are no second acts in American lives, but the truth is there are many. Witness, Mr. Fitzgerald, your own Jay Gatz transformed into Jay Gatsby. So too with Jack Hardy, evolving from prairie farmhand to ivy league scholar, a transformation catalyzed by a name change.
Interestingly, an internet search did turn up an Ernest Harding Jackson. This Ernest is an Illinois compiler of dry census information apparently used for genealogical research: The 1840 Federal Census, Winnebago County, Illinois (1975); Marriages of Union County, Illinois, 1818-1880 (1977); Federal Census Index of Union County, Illinois, 1820-1880 (1978); 1860 Federal Cenusu, Winnebago County, Illinois (1983); Marriages of Alexander County, Illinois (1986) and Combined Atlases of Winnebago County, Illinois, 1871-1892-1905: and Atlas of Boone and Winnebago Counties, Illinois, 1886 (1991). Note that Alexander and Union Counties adjoin St. Claire County whose county seat, Belleville, is the birthplace of Ernest Harding Jackson, our Jack Hardy.
Did Jack Hardy at some time abandon his adventurous youth to return to the more sober persona of Ernest Harding Jackson? Is he even now sitting in a quiet Illinois library, gathering dusty data for yet another meditation on nineteenth century census information? Has he, at last, assumed his true identity? Perhaps, like the title character(s) in Oscar Wilde’s play, Jack Hardy has discovered the importance of being Ernest.
***
At Santa Fe High School, Jackson Hardy was an ideal student, collecting academic honors while busy with extracurricular activities. Smart, good-looking and popular, Jack would have made his parents proud except that he had no parents. Jack was an orphan and supported himself all through high school through a variety of odd jobs.
At graduation in May 1940, Jack Hardy was among an elite group of students receiving honors for scholastic achievement but Jack Hardy was the only student to win a grand prize – a full four-year scholarship to Harvard University. Within a few weeks, Jack’s singular achievement would pale when the astonishing truth about Jack Hardy was revealed. As it turned out, Jack Hardy did not exist and never did.
Jack Hardy was really Ernest Harding Jackson, a teen-age runaway whose odyssey began at age 14 in Belleville, Illinois. Young Ernest chafed at the limitations at the family farm run by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. James W. Jackson where Ernest and his younger brother Elmer spent long days in labor. One day, as a “prank,” Ernest decided to leave home and make his own way in the world.
He hitchhiked to Clay County, Arkansas where his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Holcomb, ran a small farm. He stayed over a year until a quarrel with his grandparents pushed him to leave.
Around 1938, Ernest headed to Kent, Texas with the intention of becoming a cowboy, even though he’d never even ridden a horse. He got on at a nearby ranch, giving the name of Jackson Harding but the trail boss, half deaf, heard it as “Jack Hardy” and the name stuck. In Texas, Jackson – now Jack Hardy and not yet 17 – tried to get back into high school, taking a job doing housework to earn room and board. After a while, a growling stomach and an itch to travel led him to abandon that plan and head further west.
In the spring of 1939, Jack Hardy wound up in Santa Fe where he took a job as a yard boy for Santa Fe magazine writer Dorothy Thomas. To make ends meet, Jack also worked odd jobs at various cafés, ranches and farms. Thomas inspired Jack to take up writing and, impressed with his work, Thomas wangled a job for Jack reporting school news at the Santa Fe New Mexican where stories under his byline appeared often during the 1939-1940 school year.
The revelations of Jack Hardy’s true identity first appeared in the St. Louis and Belleville newspapers after Jack wrote to his parents telling them of the scholarship and of his intention to visit them that summer. The Jacksons in Belleville, it was reported, were looking forward to the visit.
In the meantime, Jack was preparing to enter Harvard in the fall of 1940 under the name of Jack Hardy, a name he intended to keep. “I wanted to make my own way,” Jack told the New Mexican, “I think I have but now I am glad that the whole thing is out and I don’t have to pretend anymore. I just hope that they won’t take my scholarship away from me.”
There the record ends. No more is heard of Jack Hardy in Santa Fe or New Mexico. Whatever happened to Jack Hardy? Did he go on to complete his education at Harvard? A search of Harvard alumni discloses no Jack Hardy or Ernest Harding Jackson as a graduate after 1940. Was Jack Hardy caught up in a world war after December 1941? A wide search of military records yields no Jack Hardy or Ernest Harding Jackson, at least not one fitting Jack’s description. What happened to Jack Hardy?
The capacity for reinvention is celebrated in America, a nation created by men and women fleeing the limitations of the past, not once but many times as people pushed on to new frontiers. Recall Pilgrims leaving England for religious freedom, Spanish conversos escaping the Inquisition, Irish peasants seeking relief from famine and on and on. Once in America, pioneers pushed further west. One story claims that the slang word “git” originated in the practice of Midwesterners abandoning the family farm for the Texas frontier and scrawling the initials GIT onto fence posts, meaning “Going Into Texas.” F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously claimed that there are no second acts in American lives, but the truth is there are many. Witness, Mr. Fitzgerald, your own Jay Gatz transformed into Jay Gatsby. So too with Jack Hardy, evolving from prairie farmhand to ivy league scholar, a transformation catalyzed by a name change.
Interestingly, an internet search did turn up an Ernest Harding Jackson. This Ernest is an Illinois compiler of dry census information apparently used for genealogical research: The 1840 Federal Census, Winnebago County, Illinois (1975); Marriages of Union County, Illinois, 1818-1880 (1977); Federal Census Index of Union County, Illinois, 1820-1880 (1978); 1860 Federal Cenusu, Winnebago County, Illinois (1983); Marriages of Alexander County, Illinois (1986) and Combined Atlases of Winnebago County, Illinois, 1871-1892-1905: and Atlas of Boone and Winnebago Counties, Illinois, 1886 (1991). Note that Alexander and Union Counties adjoin St. Claire County whose county seat, Belleville, is the birthplace of Ernest Harding Jackson, our Jack Hardy.
Did Jack Hardy at some time abandon his adventurous youth to return to the more sober persona of Ernest Harding Jackson? Is he even now sitting in a quiet Illinois library, gathering dusty data for yet another meditation on nineteenth century census information? Has he, at last, assumed his true identity? Perhaps, like the title character(s) in Oscar Wilde’s play, Jack Hardy has discovered the importance of being Ernest.
***
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