Cristóbal Mendoza of the Republic of Venezuela. In 1813 Mendoza fled a royalist invasion and moved to Grenada, and soon after he joined Simon Bolivar's effort to liberate South America from Spanish rule. Bolivar appointed Mendoza the governor of Mérida in May 1813, and Mendoza was appointed governor of Caracas several months later. Fleeing Venezuela again in 1814 when José Tomás Boves conquered Caracas, Mendoza moved to Trinidad, where from 1819 and 1820 he was an active political writer for the "Correo del Orinoco". In 1826, Francisco de Paula Santander appointed Mendoza as Mayor of the Department of Venezuela in the empire
Bolivar, Tennessee the banks of the Big Hatchie, the Indian name for the river, and was called Hatchie Town. The new site, the county seat, bore the name Hatchie until by Act of the Tennessee State Legislature, on October 18, 1825, it was changed to Bolivar. Bolivar was named for General Simón Bolívar, the South American patriot and liberator. Hardeman County was officially organized on October 16, 1823, and was named for Thomas Jones Hardeman, a veteran of the War of 1812, who served as the first county court clerk and a commissioner for Bolivar before moving to Texas in 1835. According