William Wright (W. W.) Heard (April 28, 1853 - May 31, 1926) was the 32nd Governor of
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
from 1900 to 1904. His governorship saw the start of the Louisiana's oil and gas industry.
Early life
Heard was educated in a local school in his native
Union Parish
Union Parish ( French: ''Paroisse de l'Union'') is a parish located in the north central section of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,107. The parish seat is Farmerville. The parish was created on Ma ...
. He long remembered the challenges of educating children in rural areas. Heard worked to create the first Louisiana State Board of Education.
On December 3, 1878, Heard married the former Isbella E. Manning. The couple had seventeen children, including Louisiana Belle, Manning, William Wright Heard, Jr., and Alma, who died as a toddler.
Public service
In 1884, Heard was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives from Union Parish in north Louisiana, based about Farmerville. After a single four-year term, he was elected in 1888 to the Louisiana State Senate for a four-year term. In 1892, Heard was elected as Louisiana state auditor, a position that he held for two terms of eight years. The auditor's position is no longer elected.
As a protégé of the outgoing governor, Murphy James Foster, Sr., Heard was controversially hand-picked by Foster to succeed him at the Democratic state convention of 1900 at a time before Louisiana held primary elections. Heard was a member of the
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, but he had
Populist
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term develop ...
tendencies and was a supporter of the expanded coinage of
silver
Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...
.
At the general election, he defeated two Republicans running on separate tickets, both of whom received less than 22 percent of the vote following the mass-scale disenfranchisement of
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
voters via Jim Crow laws. Reflecting this was the dramatic decline in voting, from a post-
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
high in the 1896 statewide election of over 203,000 votes down to only 76,000 by 1900. Not until 1940 would more than 200,000 voters participate in a general election for governor. This 1900 election also marked the last time Republicans would have any real presence in the legislature until the 1960s.
Heard was inaugurated governor on May 8, 1900, and held this office until May 10, 1904. At the time governors in Louisiana could not succeed themselves. His term was fairly low-key compared to other colorful and dynamic personalities that held that office and he was considered to be a "
bureaucratic
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
" governor. His lieutenant governor was Albert Estopinal, a planter and outgoing state senator from St. Bernard Parish. As state banking commissioner, Heard named
Lee Emmett Thomas
Lee may refer to:
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Given name
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** Li (surname 利) or Lee (Hanzi ), a Chinese s ...
, like Heard a native of Union Parish. Thomas was thereafter the
mayor
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well ...
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
Tangipahoa Parish
Tangipahoa Parish (; French: ''Paroisse de Tangipahoa'') is a parish located in the southeast corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 121,097. The parish seat is Amite City, while the largest city is ...
Independence
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
, which had been settled by Wilson's father, a physician, in the 1850s. The town was reduced in area before it was established in 1912, by which time Heard had been out of office for eight years. Wilson himself was the father of Justin E. Wilson, the Louisiana
Cajun
The Cajuns (; French: ''les Cadjins'' or ''les Cadiens'' ), also known as Louisiana ''Acadians'' (French: ''les Acadiens''), are a Louisiana French ethnicity mainly found in the U.S. state of Louisiana.
While Cajuns are usually described as ...
humorist and chef.
It was during Heard's term that the discovery of oil was made by W. Scott Heywood and Associates of what is now Jeff Davis Parish, then part of Calcasieu Parish. This company completed Jennings Oil Company Number 1, Jules Clement, at Evangeline on September 21, 1901. This was the start of the vital Louisiana oil and gas industry. Couple the wealth of this industry with the rise of forestry and the earlier discovery of Sulfur, and the state was sent on a new wave of economic growth. Eventually, Louisiana became one of the major American producers of oil and natural gas in addition to a center of petroleum refining and petrochemicals manufacturing, as the state remains to this day, augmented by offshore drilling.
The Louisiana Revised Statutes specify that the governor shall determine the design of the official state seal. To standardize a design for the seal, Governor Heard instructed the Secretary of State in 1902 to use a seal described as:
"A Pelican, with its head turned to the left, in nest with three young; the Pelican, following the tradition in act of tearing its breast to feed its young; around the edge of the seal to be inscribed 'State of Louisiana'. Over head of the Pelican to be inscribed 'Union, Justice', and under the Pelican to be inscribed 'Confidence'."
The description of the seal included the motto, which Gov. William Heard had chosen: Union, Justice, Confidence. This seal was adopted on April 30, 1902.
Heard achieved the formation of the state prison system, which eliminated privately contracted prisons. He was also instrumental in forming the State Department of Pest Control, thus trying to control the hated
boll weevil
The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growin ...
, which plagued the
cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...
plants.
Serving in public office most of his early life, Heard became a banker in New Orleans after his single term as governor. He died in New Orleans and is interred there at
Metairie Cemetery
Metairie Cemetery is a cemetery in southeastern Louisiana. The name has caused some people to mistakenly presume that the cemetery is located in Metairie, Louisiana, but it is located within the New Orleans city limits, on Metairie Road (and fo ...
.
Lineage
William Wright Heard, like a gubernatorial successor, Ruffin Pleasant, was born near the rural community of Shiloh in Union Parish north of Ruston. He was the son of Stephen Southard Heard and Mary Ann Wright. They are interred at Fellowship Baptist Church Cemetery in Dubach along with other allied members of the Heard family. Coming from a long lineage of southern pioneers, his ancestors included John Stovall, Owen Griffin, John Anderson and Charles Heard, all Revolutionary War patriots. Stephen Heard RS, one of the first governors of
Georgia
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, was also from this noble line. As with most members of his family, Heard was
Baptist
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...