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 2nd, 1917.
Buried from Church of the Ascension, January 4th,
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.
