Harding of the Hill

Holfast Gardner

Harding of the Hill

A great-grandson of Samwise Gamgee, Harding was the son of Holfast Gardner, who in turn was the son of Frodo Gardner, the second child and eldest son of Samwise. Harding was born in the year 1501 by the Shire-reckoning (or IV 80, some nineteen years after his famous great-grandfather passed into the West).

The descendants of Sam Gamgee's eldest child Elanor dwelt at Undertowers on the Tower Hills, so it seems that Bag End must have been passed down to Sam's second child Frodo, and so to Frodo's descendants, of whom Harding is the last recorded. This explains Harding's full name 'Harding of the Hill', where the 'Hill' is apparently a reference to Hobbiton Hill, within which Bag End lay.