Rev. Edmund Joyner’s Eulogy for Lucy Morgan Beard, 1917

From the Feb. 1, 1917 issue of the Hickory Daily Record

Lucy Jeanette (Morgan) Beard

Born at Petersburg, Va., November 28, 1852; fell asleep at her home Hickory, N.C., January 2^nd, 1917.

Buried from Church of the Ascension, January 4^th, the Rev. Edmund N. Joyner, her first pastor at Hickory, and the Rev. Samuel B. Stroup, her present pastor, officiating.

The beginning of Mrs. Beard’s life at Hickory dates from its day of small things, when the whole town was one big family. And it was through the zeal of such spirited, as well as public-spirited, characters as she, that the town made such progress that it began and continued to grow, reaching its present proportions within the comparatively brief period of her residence.

She was married at 18 to that great-hearted Christian citizen, Mr. James. B. Beard. Cherished was the union between them, and none the less, ever, after he had preceded her to “saints’ rest” by some years.

Mrs. Beard was brimming with a well-directed energy and enthusiasm, always as broadly interested as she could safely reach, and no farther. Never, with her powers and faculties, did she “so fight as one that beateth the air.”

Perhaps her peculiar genius lay in aptitude for teaching little children. She was long a teacher, and even after the need passed as a means of support, because she loved children, she rejoiced in the atmosphere of their stirring, happy ways. She kept her little school about her even until that moment when the teacher, who took his little ones up in his arms to bless them, with a quick summons dismissed her gentle spirit to its endless holiday.

One brother of the immediate family, Mr. Alfred Morgan, remains, and her niece, Miss Josie Person, who long shared her home and was as a daughter in a thorough and tender mutual affection.

Were I to describe Mrs. Beard in one word, as to all her relationships in life, that one would be the great word “loyalty.” From the path which led straitest to duty and to service she never flinched or swayed.

As touching her own family, in all its members, or their memory, having passed on, her constancy was woven of cloth of gold.

In the ties of personal friendship, and some were long years abiding, that word was of luminous application.

Among the people and interests of her city, that term is written in the way in which she will be universally, confessedly missed.

To her church, with charity which never faileth towards all who love her Lord in sincerity and truth, she was true in a devotion and zeal which made her path a shining light.

And last, and best: that which wrought the lustrous word into her whole life, to herself she was loyal; to her own convictions and standards and ideals she was absolutely true.

With quietness and confidence she held fast to her moral estimates and judgments, which fashioned and guided and restrained her Christian womanliness; she exacted of others nothing she did not require of herself; she gave freely of what she had and gave loyally of it all, to family and friend, to neighborhood and to the household of her faith.

She, and those like her, are thus enshrined in the Book of Wisdom.

“The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. And they that put their trust in Him shall understand this truth, and such as ben faithful in love shall abide with Him; for grace and mercy are to His saints, and He hath care for His elect.

“Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord’s hand; for with His right hand shall He cover them, and with His arm shall He protect them.