Lockard Name Survives



	Some time ago this paper had occasion to publish something about 
Sam Scragg and Cad Lockard, who came to this country from England many 
years ago.

	It so happened that these two men settled in these parts.  Lockard 
on the Missouri Fork of Hewett and Scragg at some other point not far 
away, but this writer has not been able to learn exactly.

	Mr. Lockard had evidently been a coal miner in England.  At any 
rate, he was the first man to open coal on Hewett and convince the people 
that it was as good to burn as wood, and easier to provide.  He opened 
the first coal this writer ever saw burn on the farm where we live then, 
and where the Spruce River Coal Company operates now, except it was on 
the opposite side of the creek from where the mine is now 
operating.

	That was the first coal this writer ever saw, except a chunk here 
in yonder where it had been torn out of the hillside by an uprooted tree. 
People claimed it would burn, and that's all we knew about it.

	But we have strayed far from what we started to say in the beginning 
of this item.  When Cad Lockard lived on Hewett we can remember seeing his 
daughter's, and it has always been our belief that there were no sons.  
It was learned last Sunday at the Aleshire reunion on Hewett that we 
were mistaken.  We met the two Lockard sons, born on the Missouri Fork 
when their parents lived there, from which place they moved before we can 
remember much about it. Oley was born in 1877 in the other in 1880.

	These sons, named Oley and Garfield, now reside on Davis Creek, 
Kanawha County, and they also have sons, so the name is not one just to 
remember.  It will be here perhaps as long as time last.

					Many Changes

	But great development has taken place since coal was introduced as 
a shin warmer by the old Englishman about 63 years ago.  The generations 
following that period take it for granted that coal has always been used 
by our people as a fuel to warm the room before we advanced still farther.  
Now most of us use natural gas, an item in the scheme of things which was 
unknown until many years later.

	In fact, not many people live like they did 60 years ago.  This 
country has advanced beyond belief if one thinks of the conveniences 
we have now compared to the early days.  We often wonder what would 
happen if it could be possible to wake up some morning and find things 
as they where when the older men were boys. We can imagine that people 
would be as crazy as a gang of rats seem to be when rousted out of a den 
where they have accumulated without disturbance for some time.

	The older folks can appreciate these changes for better living, 
but the younger generation take them for granted.  They cannot imagine 
how the old settlers lived, and don't want to hear them talk about it.  
They do not seem to believe it, but we lived in spite of all the 
hardships and inconveniences, and everybody, as we recall, was more 
content than they are now.  They did not expect much, and were never 
disappointed.