JAMES ADDISON HEARD -- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (Written with Perplexity AI)

 HEARD AND NOLEN FAMILY HISTORIES

James Addison Heard

March 14, 1870 – December 20, 1946

Teacher, Timberman, Homesteader, and Patriarch of the Pitkin Heards

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James Addison Heard as a young man, from a tintype kept among Clora Frances Nolen Heard’s school keepsakes. He would have been about twenty-five, and she about fifteen. (Family collection)

Born

March 14, 1870, Dry Creek, Calcasieu (now Beauregard) Parish, Louisiana

Parents

John Thomas Heard (1845–1912) and Sarah Adeline Lindsey Heard (1840–1925)

Married

Clora Frances Nolen (1880–1968), November 3, 1897

Children

Thirteen (ten sons, three daughters); twelve raised to adulthood

Home

Homestead southwest of Pitkin, Vernon Parish, Louisiana

Callings

Teacher; timber surveyor and woods foreman; farmer; parish school and fair board member; Mason

Died

December 20, 1946, Pitkin, Louisiana, age 76

Buried

Sugartown Baptist Church Cemetery, Sugartown, Beauregard Parish

James Addison Heard was born on March 14, 1870, at Dry Creek, in the old “Imperial Calcasieu” Parish of southwest Louisiana, and died on December 20, 1946, at his farm home near Pitkin in Vernon Parish. In the seventy-six years between, he was a scholar of John McNeese’s pioneering schools, a country schoolteacher, a timber man who could reckon the board feet in a stand of longleaf pine by walking through it, a homesteader, and a member of the parish school and fair boards. Above all, he and his wife, Clora Frances Nolen, built a large and remarkably close family. They raised twelve of their thirteen children to adulthood, and their descendants still own the family farm and gather there today (Family record; FamilySearch; Her Family and Life).

Dry Creek Beginnings

Addison, as his family would call him, was the second of eight children of John Thomas Heard and Sarah Adeline Lindsey Heard. His father was born in Mississippi in 1845 and came as a small child to Dry Creek, where his own parents, Jesse Holloway Heard and Mary Susan Hewell Heard, had settled after coming west from Georgia. His mother was born in Arkansas on December 12, 1840, to Burkett W. Lindsey and Harriet Serene Williams, whose farm backed up to the Heard place (Fletcher, Leesville Leader; Royal Roots; Heard Family Letters).

Asbury Monroe Lindsey, Addison’s uncle and his father’s comrade at Vicksburg. (Communicating Life2)

John Thomas Heard went off to the Civil War with his neighbor Asbury Monroe Lindsey and endured the siege of Vicksburg beside him. He was still a teenager when he lived through the horrors of that siege. After the surrender he was paroled and walked home half starved. The starvation and the infections that came with it scarred his intestines and damaged his digestive system, and he suffered physical difficulties for the rest of his life. He never forgot his commanding officer, William Crowder, and said he would not have survived without him. When his first son was born, he named the boy William Crowder Heard (Family recollection). After the war he married his comrade’s sister. On July 18, 1866, Jesse Holloway Heard wrote to his mother in Georgia that “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” (Heard Family Letters; Royal Roots). Family stories remember Sarah Adeline as both brave and stubborn: she once raced a panther home through the creek bottom rather than cut loose the beef she was carrying for her children (Heard Family Letters).

Addison grew up in the Heard log home at Dry Creek, which Jesse Holloway and Mary Susan Heard had built and John Thomas and Sarah Adeline enlarged. The farm had its own small sawmill, and a huge crosscut saw hung over the barn door. Family tradition holds that timber cut on the Dry Creek place went into the first courthouse at Lake Charles (Royal Roots; Heard Cousins). The old house stood for more than a century. In the 1980s it was the oldest building in the parish, until it burned. Photographs of it appear in the published parish history and are kept at the parish museum and library (Family recollection). The census of 1870 found the infant James in his father’s household in Ward 6 of Calcasieu Parish, with Lake Charles as the post office. In 1880 the family was enumerated in the Sugartown ward (Family record; FamilySearch).

The Heard family home at Dry Creek, where Addison grew up. Built of logs by Jesse Holloway and Mary Susan Heard and enlarged by John Thomas and Sarah Adeline, it was the oldest home in the parish in the 1980s. (Family collection)

Addison’s youngest sister, Della Amanda Heard, with her husband, Jeb Stewart. (Communicating Life2)

Around him the family grew: William Crowder “Billy,” the eldest, born in 1867; then George Melton (1872), Eugenia Sarah (1874), Emma Frances (1876), John Holloway “Johnny” (1878), Della Amanda (1881), and Zachary Taylor (1885) (Family record; FamilySearch). Billy never married. George Melton moved to Kansas City, where in 1913 he married Leda Godell Smith and spent the rest of his life. Eugenia married Jackson Ford “Jack” Lyles in 1907, and Emma married Samuel Nathan Miller in 1902. Johnny married Alice Audra Thompson in 1909 and, like Emma, stayed at Dry Creek. Della, the youngest daughter, married Jeb Stewart in 1917; they had no children. Zachary married Eliza Irene Briggs in 1912 (Freeman, Photo Identification).

About 1899, six of Addison’s brothers and sisters sat for a photograph among the pines at Dry Creek with their first cousin and neighbor Lawrence Lindsey, son of Asbury Monroe Lindsey and Ellen Bilbo Lindsey. Addison is not in the picture; by then he had married and was making his own home. The photograph has come down through the family of the youngest brother, Zachary Taylor Heard. Billy, seated at the center, looks so much like Addison in his later years that without the name written beneath him the family might have taken one brother for the other (Freeman, Photo Identification).

Addison’s brothers and sisters at Dry Creek, about 1899. Front: cousin and neighbor Lawrence Lindsey, Della, William Crowder “Billy,” and Zachary Taylor. Back: Johnny standing between his sisters Eugenia and Emma. (Family of Zachary Taylor Heard; Communicating Life2)

Addison’s family was well known in the region. His father’s brother, George Washington Heard, ran a hotel in the young town of DeRidder with C. Landry, and when DeRidder was incorporated in 1903 he became its first mayor (City of DeRidder, History; Political Graveyard, DeRidder; Freeman, Photo Identification). The Heard and Lindsey households were bound together twice over. Asbury Monroe Lindsey was Sarah Adeline’s brother and John Thomas’s closest friend from their soldiering days, and the two families raised their children side by side at Dry Creek. Asbury and his wife, Ellen Lenore Bilbo, had ten children, five of whom lived to grow up: William Burkett “Bill” (1869), Joseph Lawrence (1875), John McNeese “Mac” (1878), Winfrey Florance (1883), and Crista Pearl (1892). Their third son carried the name of the schoolmaster who was also family, for Ellen’s sister Susan Cordelia Bilbo was the wife of John McNeese (Freeman, Photo Identification).

A second photograph from these years, kept by Miller descendants, shows a crowd gathered on a long board porch, very likely the Lindsey home at Dry Creek, since the Heard house was built of logs. Two of the young women hold guitars. Addison’s brother Billy stands in front of the porch in a dark coat and light trousers, and his brother George Melton sits on the steps in a hat, his name written in the margin below. Ellen Lindsey appears to stand in the doorway and Asbury at the far left, surrounded by their children and their Heard nephews and nieces. The family also remembers that Johnny Heard played the violin and sang (Freeman, Photo Identification).

Heards and Lindseys on a Dry Creek porch, about 1898. Billy Heard stands in front in a dark coat and light trousers; George Melton Heard sits on the steps in a hat. Ellen Bilbo Lindsey is likely in the doorway, Asbury Monroe Lindsey at far left. (Garrett Greene collection; Communicating Life2)

A Student of John McNeese

The children of Dry Creek grew up under the influence of John McNeese, a New Yorker and Union veteran who had come to Louisiana in 1873. He taught for about a decade in the parish’s schools, and in 1888 he became the first superintendent of schools for Imperial Calcasieu Parish. He went on to build schools across the region and to establish a central high school and a normal institute to train teachers (64 Parishes, John McNeese). In the family’s memory, McNeese taught at Addison’s school, the Dry Creek Academy, and inspired the Heard, Lindsey, Miller, Kent, Bilbo, and Lyles children to seek more education. Several became teachers, and the youngest Heard son, Zachary Taylor, followed McNeese into the law (Heard Cousins).

Addison was one of them. Records summarized by Vernon Parish historian Stanley Fletcher show him as a student at the normal college in Lake Charles, the forerunner of McNeese State University, in 1889 and again in 1902. A newspaper enrollment list kept by the family shows him attending again in 1894.   In 1940,  Addson reported two years of college to the census taker (Fletcher, Leesville Leader; Normal Notes, 1894). McNeese’s summer Normal sessions drew well over a hundred teachers to Lake Charles for four weeks of study. One year the session opened in the Lake Charles High School with 150 teachers, and another closed with a grand picnic at Walnut Grove, the teachers carried there aboard the steamer Hazel (Calcasieu Normal School Opens; Closed With a Picnic). The family remembers that Addison and at least two of his sisters trained there, and that he taught in the schools of old Imperial Calcasieu during his twenties and early thirties, at Dry Creek, Rosepine, and Blue Branch (Heard Cousins; Her Family and Life).

McNeese’s Normal School at Lake Charles, where Addison trained as a teacher. (Family collection)

He took an active part in the profession. When the Teachers’ Institute of Calcasieu Parish met at the Dry Creek Academy in the 1890s, with Superintendent McNeese presiding over the program, the minutes record that Mr. J. A. Heard was introduced and spoke on “Our duty to our country” (Teachers’ Institute Minutes). In 1895 he registered at the Ellington House hotel in Alexandria, giving his home as Dry Creek (Hotel Arrivals, 1895). Family lore preserves a favorite story from these teaching years. A school commencement was a great occasion in a small community, and Addison did not want the day spoiled by drinking. He went to the saloon keepers and persuaded them to close their doors during the commencement exercises, and the family has long remembered that a newspaper of the day told the story with delight (Freeman, Vernon Parish History).

The Calcasieu Summer Normal closes with a picnic. (Newspaper clipping, family collection)

Schools in those years were often supported by subscription, with parents paying for books and supplies, and the school calendar bent around planting and harvest (Heard Cousins). A teacher boarded with local families, and while teaching at Blue Branch, Addison boarded for a time in the home of Merida Tilus “Til” Nolen and Maria Theresa Jones Nolen. There he came to know their red-haired daughter Clora, who was one of his pupils (Heard Cousins).

Marriage to Clora Frances Nolen

On November 3, 1897, James Addison Heard married Clora Frances Nolen. The marriage is recorded in Calcasieu Parish (FamilySearch; Heard Cousins). Clora was barely five feet tall, with flaming red hair, and her husband was some ten years her senior. She called him “Addison” or, more often, “Mr. Heard” (Heard Cousins).

The marriage joined Addison to one of the leading families of the Pitkin country. Til Nolen had grown up poor after his father was killed by “home guard” men during the Civil War, but he built up a large farm and later ran the Pitkin Mercantile. Maria Jones Nolen was a proud, outspoken matriarch whose nephew Sam Houston Jones became governor of Louisiana in 1940 (Her Family and Life). She had little patience for most people, but she was fond of her son-in-law because he was an educated man. She told her grandchildren she wished she had an education herself (Her Family and Life).

Maria Theresa Jones Nolen, Addison’s mother-in-law, as a young woman. She admired him as “an educated man.” (Family collection)

Their first child, Thomas Pink, was born nine months after the wedding, on August 25, 1898. By the census of 1900 the young family was living in Ward 5 of Vernon Parish, near the Nolens (Family record; Heard Cousins).

The correspondence columns that the Alexandria Town Talk printed from Slabtown in those years show the young couple settled among Clora’s people. The local correspondent noted Nolen comings and goings, reported that J. A. Heard and J. H. Bedgood had made a business trip to Leesville, and recorded visits from Addison’s brother William, who called on him one Saturday night and, another time, came from Merryville to stay with him at Slabtown (Slabtown Items).

The Homestead on Campbell Branch

Addison and Clora acquired their land by homestead. Fletcher notes that Addison was the only Heard to homestead in Vernon Parish, and his 160 acres southwest of Pitkin, on Campbell Branch along what is now G. Moore Road, are recorded in 1906 (Fletcher, Leesville Leader). The farm lay next to the Nolen place, within easy walking distance of Clora’s parents (Heard Cousins; Her Family and Life). The nearby settlement was still called Slabtown, after the sawmill slabs of its early days, and the Town Talk’s correspondents used that name. It kept it until the timber companies brought the railroad to town in 1905 and 1906. Then the community took a new name, Pitkin, given by one of the timber barons. Local histories say it honored a railroad man named Pitkin who died while the line was being built (Family recollection; A Good Home for a Poor Man; Vernon Parish Tourism, Pitkin).

When the oldest children were born, the country around the farm was still covered in old-growth longleaf pine. Some trees were centuries old, with a canopy so high that, as Myrtis Lee later told her daughter, you could drive a car through the forest beneath it (Heard Cousins).

Timberman and Woods Foreman

That forest drew the great lumber companies. The W. R. Pickering Lumber Company of Kansas City bought 30,000 acres of virgin longleaf pine in Vernon Parish and began sawing at Pickering in December 1898. In 1905 it opened a third Louisiana mill at Cravens, about twenty miles southeast of Pickering, on the Santa Fe line. Its landholdings eventually reached about 130,847 acres in Vernon, Calcasieu, and Sabine parishes (Vernon Parish Tourism, Pickering; Pickering Lumber Company Records). Cravens had its own post office from 1906 until 1928, when its mail was transferred to Pitkin (Vernon Parish Post Offices).

As his family grew, Addison found that a teacher’s pay could not keep pace, and sometime after the big mills opened he went into the timber business (Heard Cousins; Her Family and Life). The family remembers him as a surveyor and timber buyer and as a “woods foreman,” chiefly for the Pickering Lumber Company. His great gift was arithmetic. He was known for doing complex calculations in his head, and his grandchildren were told that he could walk through a stand of timber and, by the time he had finished his transit, give an accurate estimate of the board feet it would yield. He could do the same by counting cut logs. His granddaughter Frances later wrote that his abilities were “somewhere between a calculator and a computer” (Heard Cousins).

His timber years spanned his thirties, forties, and fifties. They lasted until the cutover was complete and Pickering closed its Louisiana mills: Cravens in 1925, Pickering in 1926, and all Louisiana operations by 1927 (Heard Cousins; Pickering Lumber Company Records). By then the virgin longleaf forest was gone, and the younger Heard children grew up amid acres of pine stumps. According to the family, the company asked Addison to transfer to its newer mill at Haslam, Texas, across the Sabine between Logansport and Joaquin. He declined to leave his farm and family (Heard Cousins; Pickering Lumber Company Records).

Life on the Heard Farm

Between 1898 and 1922, Addison and Clora had thirteen children, all born at Pitkin (Family record):

	Child	Born at Pitkin	Died
1	Thomas Pink “T.P.,” “Skipper”	Aug. 25, 1898	1980
2	Francis Hewell “France”	Dec. 23, 1900	1993
3	Adeline Theresa “Addie”	Nov. 8, 1902	1995
4	Archie Glenn	Feb. 11, 1904	1989
5	Rufus Addison	Dec. 19, 1906	1982
6	Jesse Burkett	Nov. 19, 1908	1986
7	Simmie Nolen	Aug. 31, 1910	1989
8	Myrtis Lee	Aug. 8, 1912	1995
9	John Tilus	Sept. 15, 1914	Oct. 19, 1914
10	Vera Ruth	Dec. 12, 1915	2012
11	Meredith George	July 25, 1918	1992
12	James Alton	Sept. 30, 1920	1993
13	Lindsey Leroy	Oct. 31, 1922	2016

Clora ran the homestead, largely, as her granddaughter put it, “with labor birthed from her own body.” She was also the community’s midwife and nurse (Her Family and Life). The farm raised corn for the animals and for meal and grits; sugar cane, ground at the farm’s own mill into the cane syrup that sweetened the family table; sweet potatoes; and watermelons from the same sandy loam that made nearby Sugartown famous for them. Neighbors brought their corn and cane to the Heard mill and left a share of the product in thanks. A big herd of free-ranging hogs was rounded up each spring for marking and each fall for butchering, and the smoked pork from the smokehouse behind the house fed the family through the year. There were milk cows, sheep for wool, goats, and Grandpaw’s dogs  Clora kept a flock of geese, and with the down plucked from their breasts each Spring, made feather beds and pillows.  The fierce geese would fight the dogs, kill snakes, and terrify small children, but they surrendered with little fuss to Clora.  (Heard Cousins).

The family remembers Addison as a quiet, steady presence. He preferred buttermilk to sweet milk, especially with crumbled cornbread for his evening meal. Though he no longer taught for a living, he helped his children with their lessons, encouraged them to love learning, and drilled them especially in arithmetic, until they too could do complex calculations in their heads (Heard Cousins). He was a man of few words at the dinner table. Once, when his son France sat down wearing his hat after a trip to town, Grandpa said, “Take that hat off.” France did, and his father, seeing the new haircut, said, “Put that hat on” (Stories from Sister).  

His granddaughter Frances recalls that he had a homemade rocking chair on the front porch.  He kept it near one of the support pillows and its ledge served as a small table.  On the ledge-table he kept his pipe, ashtray, matches, and tobacca.  The burning tobacca had a sweet smell in the open air of the porch.  He usually had at least one grandchild on his knee as he rocked.  On occasion he could be persuaded to sing, most often old ballads with a funny twist, like "Ole Dan Tucker."  He would laugh at his own funny song, and tickle the child lucky enough to be in his lap.  

Four of the Heard children with the family automobile: Vera, Glenn, Myrtis Lee, and Simmie. (Family collection)

Education was held in the highest esteem in both the Heard and Nolen families. Clora said she hoped her sons would seek an education but would see to it that her daughters finished college, believing education was a woman’s best hope for a good life. All three daughters finished college, and two earned graduate degrees (Her Family and Life). The family had Methodist roots., but with no Methodist church in Pitkin, the children attended the Baptist church (Her Family and Life). Outings were family affairs: one local column noted that “Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Heard and son Simmie” were in Alexandria for the day with Mrs. F. P. Weldon and Greene Weldon (Alexandria social notice).

“The Heard Family (Addison, Clora Frances, and the 12 children) had a good life,” their granddaughter wrote. “They were far from wealthy, but they were never in need” (Heard Cousins).

Sorrow and Fire

Two tragedies marked those years. The first was the loss of their ninth child, John Tilus, born September 15, 1914, who died on October 19 at one month old. In the last days of her life, fifty-four years later, Clora still mourned him and spoke of seeing him again in heaven (Family record; Heard Cousins).

The second came around 1925. The older children had left home, the middle group were at school, and Clora had taken the four youngest boys away for the day when Addison, working in the field, saw smoke rising from the house. Too late to save the building, he began carrying the family’s belongings into the yard, going back into the burning house again and again. His hair caught fire and his face and hands were burned. Then sparks from the house set fire to the things he had piled in the yard. In the end, all he saved was the mantel clock (Heard Cousins; Her Family and Life). The children who had left for school that morning came home to a burned-out shell (Her Family and Life).

The family rebuilt across the field. The “New House,” believed finished in 1926, was a smaller frame house with a wide front porch and twin chimneys, built in a double-shotgun plan, and bricks from the old house went into its fireplace (Heard Cousins; Her Family and Life). The site of the old house became something like sacred ground to the family, where the children would pace off for their own children where each room had stood. The mantel clock became the family heirloom. Clora’s will left it to no single child; it passed from home to home so each could display it in turn. It survived a tornado in 2020 as well as the fire of 1925 (Heard Cousins).

The Heard family home near Pitkin, as maintained and refurbished by the children and grandchildren. (Family collection)

Farmer, Businessman, and Public Servant

In the census years after 1900, Addison was always enumerated as a farmer, and in his later years newspapers described him as a farmer and local businessman (Fletcher, Leesville Leader; Heard Cousins). He was called to public duty early. In 1904 he sat on the grand jury for the spring term of court, and he was later drawn for the grand jury venire in Vernon Parish (Grand Jury, 1904; Grand, Petit Juries Drawn in Vernon). He served with A. R. Hicks of Leesville and Kay Jackson of Simpson on the Vernon Parish Board of Equalization, which met in Leesville each spring for thirty days to review the parish tax rolls and settle assessment complaints (Vernon Board of Equalization). In the 1930s he served on the Vernon Parish School Board and on the board of the parish fair (Fletcher, Leesville Leader). In late 1938 the fair board, meeting in Leesville, elected him its president for 1939, succeeding Lovett Word, with G. W. Bass of Rosepine as vice president and plans laid for “a bigger and better annual fair” (Vernon Fair Board election, 1938). He was active in the Masonic Lodge, and the square and compass mark his gravestone (Heard Cousins; Sugartown Cemetery). His son France would later be honored for fifty years as a Mason.

The Vernon Parish fair board names J. A. Heard of Pitkin its president, 1938. (Newspaper clipping, family collection)

He saw his sons go to war. T.P. left high school at sixteen to serve two years in the Navy in World War I (Thomas Pinkney Heard). Glenn joined the Army after World War I and served in the cavalry (Archie Glenn Heard). Before Addison died, four of his sons, Glenn, Meredith, Alton, and Lindsey, had served in World War II, along with his oldest grandson, Hewell. Three of them were stationed in Britain before the Normandy invasion and took part in it. Glenn prepared the planes that flew in the invasion. Hewell was a navigator on one of the planes that bombed the German positions on D-Day. Lindsey, Addison’s youngest son, went ashore with the second wave on the beaches that historic day (Heard Cousins; Archie Glenn Heard; Her Family and Life; Family recollection).

He saw his children make their way in the world as well. Addie became a teacher and coach whose girls’ basketball team won a state championship in 1923, and she taught for nearly fifty years. France settled in Ruston. Burkett spent more than fifty years at Louisiana Tech, working in buildings and grounds. After his death, the sportswriter at the Shreveport Times honored him with a column titled “Who Will Turn Out the Lights?” (Family recollection) Myrtis Lee and Vera went to Baton Rouge, where their oldest brother, T.P. “Skipper” Heard, was building LSU’s athletic program. He served as athletic director from 1933 to 1954 and was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2011 (Her Family and Life; Thomas Pinkney Heard). In November 1938, J. A. Heard gave Myrtis Lee in marriage to Wilmer H. “Jack” Jackson at the family home in Pitkin, with her brothers Simmie and Meredith among the ushers (Jackson-Heard Nuptials).

Nine of Addison and Clora’s children in later life. Seated: France, Vera, Addie, Myrtis Lee, Simmie, Meredith, and Glenn; standing: Lindsey and Alton. (Family collection)

Grandpaw Heard

Addison and Clora’s first grandson, Hewell, was born in 1922, the same year as their youngest son, Lindsey. Clora liked to say, “Addison and I managed to have 13 children, and raise twelve of them; but all that dozen together could only give us 24 grandchildren” (Heard Cousins). For four decades the farm outside Pitkin was a gathering place for those grandchildren on holidays and through the long summers. The oldest grandchildren remembered that when they were young, in the 1920s and 1930s, Grandmaw ran the farm like a camp, with plenty of real farm work. In the years when Addison was still working for Pickering, the oldest grandsons spent summers there with their young uncles (Heard Cousins; Her Family and Life).

The older grandchildren’s memories of him are of a working grandfather. He sharpened a straight razor at the kitchen table when a fishhook went through the hand of his granddaughter “Sister,” while Grandma told him not to cut it out and every relative in the crowded house offered an opinion. In the end she was taken to Elizabeth, where the hook was removed (Stories from Sister). He and Clora were the first ones up in the morning, stoking the fires and warming the house before the children rose (Heard Cousins).

Final Years and Rest

One of the last photographs of James Addison Heard. (Family collection)

The burns Addison suffered in the fire had a long reach. The family has always understood that the skin cancer that took his life developed where his face had been burned (Heard Cousins). His family gathered around the dinner table on March 14, 1946, to celebrate his seventy-sixth birthday. It was his last. He died at his home near Pitkin at six o’clock on the morning of Friday, December 20, 1946, after an extended illness (Family record; FamilySearch; Shreveport Journal, 1946). He had outlived his father, who died at Dry Creek in October 1912, and his mother, who died there in December 1925 at eighty-five, as well as his brothers William Crowder (1929), George Melton (1931), and Zachary Taylor (1942) (Family record; Dry Creek Cemetery).

Word went out that day to newspapers in Shreveport and beyond. One headline called him the “Father of Athletic Director at LSU.” Another described him as “one of the oldest settlers in this area,” “very active in school work,” and a former member of the Vernon Parish School Board. That notice called him the oldest living Mason in his section of the state, while the Shreveport Journal counted him among the oldest living Masons in the Pitkin area and added that he had been “prominent and active in farming, school and educational work” (Shreveport Journal, 1946; Father of Athletic Director).

Addison at the table for his last birthday, March 14, 1946. (Family collection)

His children had scattered across the South: T.P., Simmie, and Meredith in Baton Rouge; France and Burkett in Ruston; Glenn and Rufus in Shreveport; Alton in Corpus Christi; Lindsey in DeRidder; Addie (Mrs. Bob Allardyce) and Vera, with her husband, Pete Ballis, in Beaumont, Texas; and Myrtis Lee (Mrs. Wilmer Jackson) in Coushatta. He was also survived by his sisters Della (Mrs. Jeb Stewart) of Fort Worth, Eugenia (Mrs. Ford Lyles) of Des Moines, and Emma (Mrs. Nathan Miller) of Dry Creek, and by his brother Johnny of Dry Creek (Shreveport Journal, 1946; Father of Athletic Director; Freeman, Photo Identification).

Shreveport Journal, December 20, 1946. (Newspaper clipping, family collection)

Before the funeral, he was laid out in his casket in front of the fireplace in his front bedroom. Neighbors and friends came to the house to pay their respects, and the family kept an old-fashioned wake (Family recollection). Funeral services were held at 2 p.m. on Sunday at the Baptist Church in Pitkin, with the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, officiating. Hixon Funeral Home of DeRidder was in charge, and his Masonic brothers conducted the rites at the graveside (Shreveport Journal, 1946; Father of Athletic Director).

He was buried in the Sugartown Baptist Church Cemetery in Beauregard Parish. His stone reads simply “James A. Heard, 1870–1946,” with the Masonic emblem (Sugartown Cemetery). Clora survived him by more than twenty-one years, running the farm and welcoming her grandchildren, until her death at Pitkin on March 15, 1968. She was buried beside him, less than a mile from the graves of her own Nolen grandparents (Family record; Sugartown Cemetery; CommunicatingLife2, Pitkin).

The Heard gravestone at Sugartown Baptist Church Cemetery: James A., 1870–1946, with the Masonic emblem, and Frances Clora, 1880–1968. (Family collection)

Legacy

James Addison Heard came of age in a world shaped by the Civil War and the first rural schools, and he died just after the Second World War, having seen the virgin longleaf forest felled and the cutover land begin to heal. He carried John McNeese’s faith in education from Dry Creek to Pitkin and passed it to children who became teachers, coaches, a university athletic director, career servicemen, and community leaders. In later years several of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren took part in the reforestation of the Louisiana pinelands he had once surveyed for the sawmills (Heard Cousins).

The homestead on Campbell Branch is still owned by his descendants through the family’s Heard Land Corporation, and the family still gathers there for reunions (Archie Glenn Heard; Her Family and Life). From 1988 to 1995 two of his granddaughters published a family newsletter, We Heard, for the descendants of James Addison and Clora Frances Nolen Heard, who by then numbered more than a hundred across six generations (Stories from Sister; Her Family and Life). The mantel clock he carried out of the fire is still treasured by the family (Heard Cousins).

The Heard Farm, 1898–2024

The quarter section that Addison and Clora took up beside her parents’ farm outside Pitkin has never left the family. More than 125 years later it still belongs to their descendants as the Heard Land Corporation. Soon after acquiring the land they began a large house for their growing family, and when it burned in the 1920s they built the smaller farmhouse that still stands at the heart of the property, now a century old (History of the Heard Farm).

When Addison died in 1946, Clora was sixty-six, and her children’s first concern was for her. They agreed that whichever of them would come home and live with their mother would inherit the house and land at her death. Simmie and his wife, Bobbie, tried it for a few years before moving to Baton Rouge. Glenn and his wife, Bertha, tried as well, and in time moved to a house nearby on Bertha’s family land. Grandma Heard, the family says, was a strong-minded lady, and she ran the farm in her own way until her death in March 1968 (History of the Heard Farm).

Her twelve surviving children did not want to see the farm broken up. They wanted it kept for the use of the whole family and as a way of holding the family together. The eldest son, T.P. Heard, conceived the idea of a family land corporation, had the incorporation papers drawn, and printed and handed out the stock certificates: twelve shares, one for each child. On October 23, 1968, the Heard Land Corporation was registered with the Louisiana Secretary of State (History of the Heard Farm).

For the next quarter century the children and some of the older grandchildren kept the place up through work days and annual meetings, with Bette Lois serving as secretary-treasurer and peacekeeper. There was always good food, an occasional falling out, and above all hunting season (History of the Heard Farm).

In the mid-1990s an oil and gas well on the property went into production, and for the first time the corporation earned a profit. By then most of the original shareholders were gone. To keep the land in the family, the shareholders voted in 1995 to make it a closely held family corporation. Only descendants of James Addison and Clora Frances Heard, by birth or adoption, could buy stock, and any shares offered for sale had to go first to the corporation. The amendment was filed with the state in 1997. Each original share was multiplied by a thousand so it could be divided among a growing number of heirs (History of the Heard Farm).

Between 1995 and 1999 the family held several “Cousin Summer Camps” at the farm for Addison and Clora’s great-great-grandchildren, and many in that generation still feel tied to the place because of them. Later, Lindsey and Bob built a vacation home on the land and began the hunting club, which, though a separate organization, has done much to care for the farm and keep watch over it. Family members and the corporation have rewired the old house against fire, put on a new roof, painted it, worked on its heating and cooling, built an outdoor bathroom and a covered gathering place off the back porch, and added a pavilion. George Heard lived in the house from 2010 to 2012 and Robert Allardyce from 2014 to 2021, the third and fourth generations to make their home there (History of the Heard Farm).

In October 2024 the Heard Land Corporation turned fifty-six. All twelve children and their spouses were gone, as were most of the grandchildren, but great-grandchildren and generations beyond them, down to five-times-great-grandchildren, carry the legacy forward. The family hopes to open the farmhouse for family stays and revive the cousins’ camps, keeping the farm what T.P. and his brothers and sisters meant it to be: a place that holds the family together (History of the Heard Farm).

References

Short titles in the text refer to the sources below. Family photographs are from the Heard family collection.

1. Family record. Family record and chronology supplied by Frances Ruth Jackson Freeman, Ph.D., to the Heard and Nolen Family Histories project, November 2026 (births, residences, marriage, children, deaths, burial).
2. FamilySearch. FamilySearch Family Tree. “James Addison Heard (1870–1946),” ID K2NC-G8P. Includes the 1870 census household of John Heard, the Louisiana Parish Marriages index (J. A. Heard), and the Louisiana Deaths Index. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/K2NC-G8P/james-addison-heard-1870-1946
3. Fletcher, Leesville Leader. Fletcher, Stanley. “Visions of Vernon: Vernon Parish’s Founding Families, Hayes – Hewitt.” Leesville Leader, June 9, 2021 (Heard entry). https://theleesvilleleader.com/2021/06/09/visions-of-vernon-vernon-parishs-founding-families-hayes-hewitt/
4. Sugartown Cemetery. LAGenWeb, Beauregard Parish. “Sugartown Cemetery List and Photos.” https://lagenweb.org/beauregard/cems/sugartown.html
5. Dry Creek Cemetery. Beauregard Parish LAGenWeb. “Dry Creek Cemetery.” RootsWeb. http://sites.rootsweb.com/~labeaure/DryCreekCem.htm
6. Shreveport Journal, 1946. “James A. Heard Dies at Pitkin.” Shreveport Journal, Friday, December 20, 1946. Newspaper clipping, family collection.
7. Father of Athletic Director. “Father of Athletic Director at LSU Is Fatally Stricken.” Pitkin, December 20 (special), 1946. Newspaper clipping, family collection.
8. Normal Notes, 1894. “Normal Notes.” Newspaper clipping listing the enrollment of the Calcasieu Parish normal school, 1894. Family collection.
9. Calcasieu Normal School Opens. “Lake Charles. Calcasieu Normal School Opens.” Special to the New Orleans Times-Democrat, June 2 (ninth annual session). Newspaper clipping, family collection.
10. Closed With a Picnic. “Closed With a Picnic.” Newspaper clipping on the close of the Calcasieu Summer Normal school. Family collection.
11. Teachers’ Institute Minutes. “Minutes of the Teachers’ Institute of Calcasieu Parish, La.” Meeting at Dry Creek Academy, 1890s. Newspaper clipping, family collection.
12. Hotel Arrivals, 1895. “Hotel Arrivals: Ellington House.” Alexandria newspaper clipping, 1895. Family collection.
13. Slabtown Items. “Slabtown Items” and “Slabtown, Vernon Parish, Items.” Correspondence columns, Alexandria Town Talk, c. 1898–1905, with a related social notice of a visit from Bill Heard of Merryville. Newspaper clippings, family collection.
14. Grand Jury, 1904. Grand jury list for the spring term of court, empaneled by Judge Miller, 1904. Newspaper clipping, family collection.
15. Grand, Petit Juries Drawn in Vernon. “Grand, Petit Juries Drawn in Vernon.” Leesville, La., October 21 (special). Newspaper clipping, family collection.
16. Vernon Board of Equalization. “Vernon Board of Equalization Opens Leesville Session.” Leesville, La., May 4 (special). Newspaper clipping, family collection.
17. Vernon Fair Board election, 1938. Report of the Vernon Parish fair board electing J. A. Heard of Pitkin president for 1939 (“Lovett Word of Leesville to Be Secretary-Manager”), and a companion notice, 1938. Newspaper clippings, family collection.
18. Alexandria social notice. Social notice of Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Heard and son Simmie visiting Alexandria. Newspaper clipping, 1930s, family collection.
19. Jackson-Heard Nuptials. “Jackson-Heard Nuptials of Interest Here.” Fairview-Alpha column, newspaper clipping, November 1938. Family collection.
20. Heard Cousins. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “A Salute to My Heard Cousins and Our Wonderful Family.” CommunicatingLife2, May 31, 2021. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2021/05/to-my-heard-cousins-but-especially-for.html
21. Her Family and Life. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Myrtis Lee Heard Jackson – Her Family and Life.” CommunicatingLife2, January 31, 2014 (written 2012). Source of the tintype portrait and the 1920s snapshot reproduced here. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2014/01/myrtis-lee-heard-jackson-her-family-and.html
22. Heard Family Letters. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Heard Family Letters: Communications between Dry Creek, Louisiana and Georgia,” and “Sarah Adeline Lindsey and the Panther.” CommunicatingLife2, July 2020. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2020/07/
23. Royal Roots. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Royal Roots — Heard, Jackson, Lindsey, Cox, Hewell, and Hicks Families.” CommunicatingLife2, January 2015. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2015/01/royal-roots-heard-jackson-lindsey-cox.html
24. Heard & Nolen Ancestors. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Heard & Nolen Ancestors: With DNA Summary and Evaluation for Accuracy.” CommunicatingLife2, January 2021. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2021/01/heard-nolen-ancestors-with-dna-summary.html
25. Stories from Sister. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Stories from Sister” (from the family newsletter We Heard, vol. 2, no. 2, October 10, 1990). CommunicatingLife2, December 23, 2020. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2020/12/stories-from-sister-between1988-and.html
26. Freeman, Photo Identification. Freeman, Frances J. “Photo Identification: Heard Family of Dry Creek and Related Families.” Communicating Life2 (blog), June 2021. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2021/06/photo-identificaion-heard-family-of-dry.html
27. History of the Heard Farm. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “History of the Heard Farm 1898–2024: A Short History of the Heard Land Corp.” Communicating Life2 (blog), September 21, 2024. https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2024/09/history-of-heard-farm-1898-2024.html
28. Freeman, Vernon Parish History. Freeman, Frances J. Post on James Addison Heard. Vernon Parish History group, Facebook, 2026. Family collection screenshot.
29. Family recollection. Recollections of Frances Ruth Jackson Freeman, Ph.D., granddaughter of James Addison Heard, communicated November 2026.
30. Archie Glenn Heard. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Heard Family Heroes — Archie Glenn Heard.” CommunicatingLife2, December 17, 2020. http://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2020/12/heard-family-heroes-archie-glenn-heard.html
31. Thomas Pinkney Heard. Freeman, Frances Jackson. “Thomas Pinkney Heard — Pink, Red, T.P., Skipper.” CommunicatingLife2, June 27, 2011 (reprinting 2011 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame coverage). http://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2011/06/thomas-pinkney-heard-pink-red-tp.html
32. CommunicatingLife2, Pitkin. Freeman, Frances Jackson. Posts labeled “Pitkin” (Nolen family burials at Sugartown). CommunicatingLife2. http://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/search/label/Pitkin
33. 64 Parishes, John McNeese. 64 Parishes (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities). “John McNeese.” https://64parishes.org/entry/john-mcneese
34. Pickering Lumber Company Records. East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State University. “Pickering Lumber Company Records, 1898–1955,” biographical/historical note. https://archives.sfasu.edu/repositories/2/resources/668
35. Vernon Parish Tourism, Pickering. Vernon Parish Tourism Commission. “Pickering.” https://vernonparish.org/about-us/communities/pickering/
36. Vernon Parish Tourism, Pitkin. Vernon Parish Tourism Commission. “Pitkin.” Vernon Parish: Louisiana’s Legend Country. https://vernonparish.org/about-us/communities/pitkin/
37. City of DeRidder, History. City of DeRidder. “History of DeRidder.” https://www.cityofderidder.org/229/History-of-DeRidder
38. Political Graveyard, DeRidder. The Political Graveyard. “Mayors and Postmasters of DeRidder, Louisiana.” https://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/LA/ofc/deridder.html
39. A Good Home for a Poor Man. Smith, Steven D., et al. A Good Home for a Poor Man: Fort Polk and Vernon Parish, 1800–1940 (Pitkin and Slabtown sections). https://scispace.com/pdf/a-good-home-for-a-poor-man-fort-polk-and-vernon-parish-1800-a3of7lj5k2.pdf
40. Vernon Parish Post Offices. LAGenWeb, Vernon Parish. “Vernon Parish, Louisiana Post Offices.” https://lagenweb.org/vernon/postmstr2.html

Heard and Nolen Family Histories · Compiled for Frances Ruth Jackson Freeman, Ph.D., November 2026