HEARD FAMILY LETTERS Communications between Dry Creek Louisiana and Georgia

HEARD FAMILY LETTERS  

These Letters have been passed down through the Family of Zachary Taylor Heard, youngest son of John Thomas Heard, son of Jesse Holloway Heard.

Families In the Correspondence -- Berry; Heard; Hewell; Lindsey; Williams.  Please note, the letter images can be enlarged and enhanced by the reader.

LETTER --  1828 

This Letter is a Bill of Sale for Slaves, named in the letter.  It appears to be postmarked from Newton County, Georgia.  The purchaser is McCormick Neal.  The signature of the seller has been torn away.  The purchase price is $300.  It is possible that Jesse Holloway Heard was selling slaves in Georgia before leaving for Louisiana.  

LETTER --  1829

In this letter Susannah Taylor Berry (b. 1770 d. after Sept. 1829) the widow of William Wood Berry, living in Newton County, Georgia, wills a slave girl to her grandchildren, the children of her son Edmund Berry and his wife, Elizabeth.  This bequest is a bit puzzling since Susannah had 10 children, and a multitude of grandchildren.  She may have been living with Edmund and was very close to these children or she may have left similar bequests to other grandchildren.

LETTER --  April 2nd, 1847 --From Joe to J. W. Hewell, Written in Covington, GA.

I believe this letter is written to Jesse Wyatt Hewell (b. Oct. 12, 1793 and d. Sept. 24, 1852, 5 years after this letter was written), who was the father of Mary Susan Hewell wife of Jesse Holloway Heard.  However, the letter could be written to Susan's brother,  John Wesley Hewell.  Joe is an African slave who writes to deny a debt owed to J. W. Hewell.  The letter is written for Joe by a friend, whose signature I cannot read.

LETTER --  April 12, 1848 -- From Jesse Holloway Heard in Louisiana to his Father, James A. Heard (b.1776, d. 1857) and his Mother, Elizabeth Holloway Heard (b. 1779 d. 1855) inGeorgia.  In the letter he describes their grandsons John Thomas Heard, who is 2 and approaching 3, and James Hewell Heard, who is only two months old.  He tells them that John Thomas has blue eyes while James Hewell has dark eyes.  The grandparents will die in 6 and 8 years, never having seen these grandsons.

LETTER --  Dec. 14, 1850 This two page letter from Plaquemine Parish is a puzzle to me.  I think it is sent to Jesse Holloway Heard because the writing is not his.

LETTER --  April 19, 1857 : From Mary Susan Hewell, wife of Jesse Holloway Heard to her Mother, Martha Patsy Berry Hewell. 

I could really use some help in transcribing this very personal and touching letter.

LETTER --  JULY 18, 1866

Postmarked -- Lake Charles, Louisiana 

From: Jesse Holloway HeardTo: Martha "Patsy" Berry Hewell (his Mother-in-Law)

THE LETTER

THE TRANSCRIPTION:

"Lake Charles, La.

July the 18th, 1866

Dear Mother, I take this opportunity of writing to you to let you hear from us. We are all well except my daughter-in-law. She is in bad health. John T. was married on the 27th of March, last to wife, S. A. Lindsey. She is pretty enough for anybody and smart as ladies gets to be.

I was injured during the war, about one thousand dollars [I do not understand this sentence]. John was in Service 2 years I was in 2 weeks.  

I have a first rate crop, of corn, cotton, and sugar cane and potatoes up to this time my crops is _____. I have some of my fodder pulled. I have never heard any thing of Brother. Hope [I don't know what was omitted here]

I received your letter the last of May and this is the first time that I have had the chance to get the power of attorney fixed up and my advice is not to send it until I get a letter from you to know if it is too late to send it. It will cost me about 6 dollars to send it and if it is too late to get the money I won’t send it. I want you to write to me and let me know and direct your letter to Lake Charles, La. I will write to you again soon.  

Give my best respects to inquiring friends. No more, but I remain Your most affectionate son until death.

J. H. Heard (Jesse Holloway Heard)

(I would offer three explanatory comments:  

First, John Thomas was in the siege of Vicksberg and was paroled, but fought again in the Battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. Jesse Holloway fought only at the Batles of Mansfield and Pleasant, i.e. "John was in Service 2 years, I was in 2 weeks."

Second, the daughter-in-law, Sarah Adeline Lindsey is said to have lost a baby about the time of this letter, and this may be a delicate reference to her pregnancy or to her loss. She would give birth to William Crowder Heard the following July.

Third, I do not know who "Brother" is. This is not the only letter in which he asks about this "Brother.")

The Parable of My Chicken Boy

THE PARABLE OF 

MY CHICKEN BOY

It was the fall of 1968.  I had just turned 28; I was a wife, mother of two daughters; and a fan of Elvis Presley and Daphne du Maurier.  I was in my 5th year as a public school speech therapist (that’s what we were called then).  The Caddo Parish schools were in their second year of integrating racially segregated schools.  Geographically, Shreveport, is the urban center of otherwise rural Caddo Parish (called county in the other 49 states, but Parish in Louisiana).  

In those chaotic times, I was actually working three jobs, but none of the job titles reflected my main task.  As unprepared as I was, I was acting as a cross-cultural linguistic anthropologist, struggling to help Black teachers and children understand White teachers and children, and vice versa.  Note, I am not primarily talking about spoken language.  As it turned out, non-verbal communication differences created more misunderstandings than verbal differences.

In the midst of this crazy period, I met my “Chicken Boy.”  In some strange way, this comic/tragic story remains vivid in my memory as a parable for the madness of the era.  Now, read to the very end, and pay attention, to the details because there will be a test.

I call him “Chicken Boy” or Chick for short, not to be callous, but because his “real” name was never fully established.  His adopted Mothers —and don’t get excited, in those unenlightened days, “Mothers” referred to the two women who raised him, a middle aged woman and her adult daughter —  had changed his name several times, and could not agree on what his “real” name should be.

I met Chick because one of my jobs was as an Audiologist/ Speech-Language Pathologist on a Pupil Personnel Evaluation Team.  We had four team members, including a Coordinator who was an Educational Specialist, a Psychologist, a Social Worker, and me.  Our job was to figure out what was interfering with each child’s progress, and to make recommendations to correct the problem (really simple, right?).  We were working our way through a backlog of referrals, but Chick came to us as an “emergency” case. 

Chick had just entered kindergarten, and was non-verbal; but being a five-year-old who didn’t talk did not constitute an emergency.  Rather, it was Chick’s persistent successes in escaping his teachers and running away that brought him to us.  The school hadn’t succeeded in restraining him, and they feared he would get into the street and be run over.  This was a real possibility since Chick was fast and fearless.  Our Educational Specialist had visited the school and gathered this information.  She offered no insights into Chick’s academic abilities, reporting that the teachers had not succeeded in getting him to sit in a chair.  He just sort of wandered around.  No one was sure if he could hear, or if he even understood speech.

Our social worker did a home visit and interviewed Chick’s mothers to collect his history.   His younger adopted Mother, was in the hospital for gynecological surgery when Chick’s biological Mother gave birth to him. During recovery, they shared a room.  Chick’s mother really didn’t want him, and his adopted Mothers thought that it would be really great to have a baby.  His birth mother just gave him to her roommate, and the new Mothers took him home.  There was never any paperwork or any of that legal stuff.  Chick’s adopted Mothers never heard from his birth mother again.

The Mothers had a little home in a rural area.  They raised yard chickens, and the yard was tightly fenced to keep the fowl safely inside.  They were very fond of Chick, and fed and clothed and petted him.  When he was annoying, they put him outside in the yard to play with the chickens.  They considered him a sweet, pretty little boy (and he was those things). I had the background, and thought I was ready to see Chick.

Before proceeding, I should tell you about the physical environment.  In case you are imagining a lovely clinic — forget it.  Our team operated on the third floor of a closed urban high school building.  It was a beautiful old building, but deteriorating, and less than desirable for our purposes.  I used a former classroom, with large, high windows, kept open to provide cooling ventilation since schools had no air-conditioning in those days

Chick was actually adorable.  He hopped into the room, and proceeded to explore the entire space, while clucking, cackling, and crowing.  His chicken noises were absolutely authentic, and seemed to match his mood and the discoveries he made as he explored the room.

After observing his behavior, I finally attracted his attention with a collection of toys and puppets.  He hopped around me for a while, and then climbed up on a chair, and sort of perched or squatted.  I worked to explore his receptive language, and established that not only could he hear, he understood words as well as the average 3 to 4 year old,  However, his comprehension of syntax and grammar was only at a 2 year old level.

By this time, Chick and I were friends, and he began to communicate with me.  He clucked, squawked, cackled, and pantomimed the things he wanted to tell me.  We were having a great time.  Chick began to run around and around the room, flapping his arms wildly.  Then, before I could react, he leaped up on a desk, and from the desk top, I swear, he flew, flapping his arms and going up, up to the wide sill of the big open window.  There he perched, alternately looking back at me, and then down three floors to the ground and parking lot below.  As I watched, terrified and open-mouthed, he strutted back and forth along the window sill, crowing loudly and flapping his arms.  

There was nothing wrong with Chick’s social perceptions.  He knew he had me.  If I approached him, he moved toward the edge of the window, as though preparing to fly.  He watched me closely, obviously wanting to see what I would do, and how much fun he could have with me.

“Oh, My God,” I prayed.  “Please help me.” And that was a real prayer.  I tried to talk to Chick, but he ignored me.  Then I tried clucking, and that sort of fascinated him.  He stopped pacing the sill to look at me.  I tried clucking and crowing, and he laughed at me.  Suddenly, my panicked brain focused on my “bag of tricks,” my collection of things I used to engage children.  There, among the toys, and magic tricks, and puppets, were two potential saviors — a chicken puppet and candy. 

I grabbed the chicken puppet, and began pretending she was eating the candy.  I ignored Chick, concentrating on the chicken clucking and pecking at the candy.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him watching.  When he was certain I was no longer was interested in him, he leaned further into the room to see what I was doing.  I held one of the candies up and then popped it into my mouth.  Chick leaped from the window, flapping his arms, and landed with a clunk beside me.  I grabbed and embraced him, and he was delighted, clucking warmly in my ear as I clutched him tightly to my breast, tears of thanks forming in my eyes.  In my delight, I fed him the entire box of candy corn.

The ending is relatively happy.  All Chick really needed was time with children instead of chickens; and we recommended that along with a fenced-in playground for his kindergarten class. (Wonder how that would read on a modern IEP?)  Chick would never be a an academic whiz, but he became a happy boy instead of a happy chicken, and grew up to be an exceptional basketball player.  He really did seem to fly on the court.

AND NOW, DEAR READER, FOR YOUR TEST — If you have been imagining Chick as Black, think again, and see him as White, and ask yourself what biases caused you to assume he was Black?

SARAH ADELINE LINDSEY AND THE PANTHER

The Lindsey’s were a pioneer family whose farm backed that of the Jesse Holloway Heard family. Both families were among the earliest settlers of Dry Creek Community, arriving there in the early 1800’s. The Heards came from Georgia and the Lindsey’s from Kentucky by way of Arkansas.  

When John Thomas Heard went off to fight in the Civil War, he went with his 3 year older neighbor, Asbury Monroe Lindsey. The 2 men endured the Siege of Vicksburg together before returning home. After the end of the War, John Thomas married his neighbor (and Monroe’s Sister) Sarah Adeline Lindsey. In the aftermath of the War, times were hard in Louisiana. One fall day (year not known), Sarah Adeline left her home (the Heard log home that stood until the 1980’s) early and rode the family’s big black saddle horse over to her parents’ home to help them butcher a yearling bull. She worked all day at the hard and bloody job. In the late afternoon when she was ready to go home her Dad, Burkett, strapped a fresh hind quarter of beef across the horse behind her saddle, and her mother put the beef liver (as a treat to be cooked for the babies) in a leather bag that hung from the saddle horn. They started home through the bottom land along the creek. Big pines had not been completely cleared behind the fields, and along the creek it was heavily wooded with hardwoods — oaks, sweet gums, hickory, chinquapins. The big trees in the swampy bottom made it dark and cool and shady and very quiet. The horse was nervous snd skittish and Sarah Adeline didn’t know why until she heard a strange cough sound behind her. The horse jumped and almost threw her and she looked behind and saw a big panther on the limb of a big oak. She kicked the already frightened horse and he ran breakneck down the twisting trail through the trees. Sarah Adeline knew she could cut the side of beef loose and the big cat would stop to eat, but she was too stubborn to give up the food her family needed. Instead, she whipped the horse with the reins and prayed he didn’t step in a hole. Behind her, she could hear the panther gaining on them. When the horse burst out of the woods and into the Heard fields, the cat was on the horse’s heels. Sarah Adeline began screaming for her husband, who heard the noise and grabbed his gun. As his wife raced across the field, he took aim and shot at the panther behind her. He didn’t hit the big cat, but the noise was enough to frighten it. Before he could reload, the cat disappeared into the woods. As the story was told the panther was black, but zoologists swear that there were no black panthers in the region, and that the legendary black panthers of the southern swamps were actually golden or spotted. When the story was told, Sarah Adeline was described alternatively as either brave or stubborn or both. The honor her family accorded her can be noted by the numbers of her descendants who are named Sarah, or Adeline, or Lindsey.