The county was founded in November 1819 and named posthumously for Col. Joseph Hardin, a Revolutionary War soldier and a legislative representative for the Province of North Carolina; the State of Franklin; and the Southwest Territory.

Upon the arrival of the second group, the parties finally rejoined at Johnson Creek, near present day Savannah.

[Notes 1][7] It was now July, and the pioneers set about the laying down of the first permanent settlement by non-Native Americans in the area.

[5] The settlement was created in 1817 on nearby Hardin’s Creek —on the site of what was later renamed Old Town, Tennessee.

The establishment of then neighboring Shelby County and others continued to diminish the size of Hardin until it reached its present boundaries.

Earlier on February 9, 1861, Hardin County voters had voted against holding a secession convention by a margin of 791 to 395.

The county is divided into two nearly equal divisions by the Tennessee River, which enters about midway on the south side and passes out near the northeast corner, flowing northwards.

The length of the county from north to south is about 30 miles, and its greatest width, from east to west, about 21.

This is due to the shallow, humus-poor and easily erodible Highland Rim soils, which were much less suitable for plantation farming than the rest of Middle and West Tennessee.

[24] Since the Civil War, only three Democratic Presidential candidates have ever carried Hardin County – Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Bill Clinton in 1992 – with only FDR achieving a margin of more than 100 votes.

The Savannah-Hardin County Center, a branch campus of Jackson State Community College, has operated in the City of Savannah, offering an Associate of Science degree in General Studies, since 1998.

The County of Hardin is protected by a combination of paid and volunteer Firefighter/First-Responder and Firefighter/EMT-IV level engine companies, based out of 15 Fire Districts and with approximately 60 pieces of apparatus.