And the mother is...

Phoebe!

I'm very excited! I can finally take one of my goals off the list. I found out who the mother of John Hardy is. It's funny b/c the answer was so obvious, right in front of my face.

To Recap...

A while back, I had stumbled across a census record with Alex Pridgen and his wife, Cleta N. Well one of their sons was a "hardy" and this made me wonder if Phoebe was really John's mother after all.

Well everything that I had pointed to Phoebe being his mother, but this census record really threw me off, and there's even a record that says Cleta is Hardy's mother.

Today, I decided to research all of John Hardy's children and wives, and as it turns out, the 1900 census is very revealing. It lists a "Phoeley Pridgen" (obviously someone butchered her name) and guess what her relationship is to the head of the house? MOTHER! This tells me that Cleta can't be his mother, b/c number one, if she was, Phoebe would have been dead by now (since I assumed before the possibility that Phoebe died and Alex remarried). Number 2, the census lists her as his mother, and there's no reason to assume she's not. If she wasn't, why would she be living with him anyway?

This also answers another question I had. When Phoebe died. I still don't know the exact year but it had to be sometime after 1900 and possibly before 1910.

I still have no clue who this Cleta N. is. Perhaps I pulled up the wrong record? After all, I did find it a bit odd that it listed him as "Hardy" but I know he went by "John Hardy". Hmm, so maybe it's a different one?

Who knows. For now...I have my questioned answered. Phoebe is John Hardy's mother. Now as for Phoebe's parents...that I still don't know.

Oh, and one more thing I found out today. Guess why I couldn't find Della in the 1910 census? They have her named as Dillot! That's crazy. I looked at the record and it looks like they tried to spell Della "Dellah" but whoever transcribed it thought the E was an I and the A was an O and the H was a T, and it does kind of look that way.

Now I found John Hardy in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 census. Why can't I find him in the 1930? Maybe his name was butchered too.