HARDING, GEORGE CANADY: 1829-1881.
Born near Knoxville, Tenn., on Aug. 26, 1829, George C. Harding was the son of Jacob Harding, a lawyer, and Love Nelson Harding. He was one of thirteen children. He spent his childhood and early youth in Tennessee and Illinois , and he supplemented a very limited formal education by extensive reading.
He began his newspaper career as a printer with Judge Conard of Terre Haute , publisher of the COURIER, and was soon writing for the paper. When his father started a newspaper, the PRAIRIE BEACON, in Paris, Ill., young George worked for him and also contributed articles to a literary weekly of Cincinnati , the GREAT WEST. During the Mexican War he enlisted but saw no action, since he spent most of the time in a hospital. His first editorial experience was on the Charleston, Ill., COURIER, which he made a Republican paper, despite the pro-slavery sentiments of the former Kentuckians who had settled the neighborhood. From this time until the Civil War he worked page: 132[View Page 132] on various papers in Cincinnati and in Texas, and when the war broke out he enlisted in the 21St Indiana Regiment, from which he resigned in 1864 as a second lieutenant.
Six months after leaving the army he came to Indianapolis , where with one or two interruptions he spent the rest of his life in newspaper work, being connected at different times with the INDIANAPOLIS HERALD, (from which he retired as editor, after seven years' service, in 1880) the JOURNAL, the SENTINEL, and the MIRROR.
Mr. Harding was twice married, (first to Jennie Reeves and, in 1861, to Julia C. Bannister), and had seven children. While at the height of his success he met with an accident and died of blood poisoning on May 8, 1881.
Information from Representative Men of Indiana, Vol. I, and the Indianapolis Public Library.
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The Miscellaneous Writings of George C.
Harding
(published posthumously by his wife).
Indianapolis, 1882.
