He attended New Paltz Academy, and graduated from Rutgers College in 1844.
Then he became a teacher at Fonda Academy, and at the same time studied law.
He died near the end of the session, after being confined to his room by illness during two months, and was buried at the Wiltwyck Cemetery in Kingston.
Hardenbergh descends from six of the twelve Patentees, or founders, of New Paltz, New York, including Louis DuBois and Abraham Hasbrouck of the Hasbrouck family.
His brother-in-law, Daniel Schoonmaker (1821-1877) served a term in the New York State Assembly in 1855.