Wilderness Calling: The Hardeman Family in the American Westward Movement, 1750–1900 by Nicholas Perkins Hardeman (review)

348 Western American Literature Wilderness Calling: The Hardeman Family in the American Westward Movement, 1750-1900. By Nicholas Perkins Hardeman. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1977. 357 pages, $14.95.) “The frontier experience of Thomas Hardeman and his descendants was, to an extraordinary degree, a microcosm of the country’s westering impulse, a sampling of that great human movement in its various dimen­ sions.” This comment from Nicholas Perkins Hardeman, as he begins the final chapter of this chronicle of the Hardeman family, tells it all. For it was the Hardemans, and others like them, that settled this country’s first frontier and then moved westward to explore and exploit each new frontier. The Hardemans were farmers, trappers, traders, merchants, fighters, politi­ cians, lawyers, doctors, and more. They moved west, settled land, and then left that land to move westward again. They fought in all our wars, plus one or two that were not ours, from the Revolution on through World War I. The remarkable fact is that this Hardeman family was always there when there were new frontiers to be settled and they usually played a major role in the settling, the governing, the trading, and the farming in those new areas. They were close friends of, or at least rubbed elbows with, many of the men the historians have identified as the pioneer leaders and statesmen of our country. Throughout the history of the family you encounter names like Bean, Andy Jackson, Robertson, Clay, Benton, Fremont, Gregg, Sam Houston, Sibley, and Whitman. Thomas Hart Benton read law in books generously supplied by John and Perkins Hardeman from their store in Franklin, Tennessee, and “Old Bullion” was able to return the favor a few years later in Missouri. This W'as, truly, a busy family. Dr. Nicholas Plardeman has organized, and condensed, this complex history into an exciting narrative that traces the family’s frontiering movements. While he does not discard completely the many frontier theories we are familiar with, he does make a pretty good case for the family as an environmental unit and a key factor in explaining the “inordinately high percentage of frontiersmen for five generations in a single family line.” The persistent habit of migrating, generation after generation, seems to be a culturally transmitted trait and Dr. Hardeman offers an explanation for this, also, by pointing out that the Hardemans “were notoriously enthusiastic storytellers” and the youngsters who were exposed to the countless tellings and retellings of western stories would be inclined to grow up with an attitude of warmth toward the West. There are many stories in this volume and they are all well worth the reading. Students of the frontier and the West should not be disappointed because this one book seems to have it all. ROBERT L. HUNGARLAND Eastern Kentucky University ...