Hardy and Howard O’Neal
Wed, 10/11/2023 - 5:00am
There are many brothers and sets of twins in northeast Texas today who bear the first names Hardy and Howard. Some don’t know how they came to be so called except that the names were passed down from older generations. It all started with two of Cass County’s most respected citizens, the brothers Hardy and Howard O’Neal. Their father, Henry Francis O’Neal, ran away from a private school in Mississippi at the age of sixteen and joined the American army that was about to invade Mexico. Following that service he moved from Mississippi to Harrison county, Texas, and married Melantha Cooley. Their son Hardy was born in 1851.
