Marion County Newspaper Articles

Obituary

Richard Chard, youngest son of James and Sarah Burnet Chard was
born February 29, 1832 and died at Green Camp, Ohio, August 23, 1920
aged eighty-eight years, five months and twenty-four days. He was one of a
family of six children. The others, together with the parents, have passed
into the great beyond.

Mr. Chard was united in marriage with Elizabeth Jane Berry of Green Camp, Ohio
in that part of the village south of J. M. Lamus' store, then known as Burwick. Rev. Alexander
Porter officiating, April 17, 1856. Six children, four sons and two daughters, were born to this
union, two of them--Jane Amanda and Richard II--preceding their parents in death.
Three sons and one daughter survive. James D. of Green Camp; William M. of
Richwood, Ohio; Robert E. of Poplar Bluff, Missouri and Emma Dell Howard, who lives
somewhere in the west. Twenty grandchildren also survive. Mrs. Chard died thirty three years ago.

The great commonwealth of Ohio is but thirty years older than was Mr. Chard. when his eyes
first looked upon the scenes of nature of this beautiful section of our state was then a
tractless wilderness. But now look around you and see what such men as he have
wrought; the log cabin has given place to the modern farmer's palatial home, the tallow
candle has been replaced with the electric light; the log school house has forever gone--
and the modern centralized school building has taken its place, the "meeting house"
built of logs or rough boards where the people worshiped has been supplanted by
church buildings of modern type; the automobile has relieved the prancing steed of his
passenger and carries him along well improved roads at an incredible rate of speed: the
semi monthly or weekly paper has proven inadequate to our hurried needs and has given
place to the daily press delivered at our very door.

It would have paralize civilization if, while we slept tonight, some magic finger were to push
the hand on the dial of same eighty-eight years into the past. We would have
neither mowing machine nor reaper, threshing machine nor shredder, cultivator nor
tractor, railroad nor truck, automobile nor areoplane, we would have neither bicycle nor
motorcycle, a sewing machine nor patent churn, electric washer nor telephone; we
would have neither a megaphone nor grapophone, a player piano, graphonola, a
typewriter, a linetype, a two-cent postage stamp, a kodak, a lithograph, an American
revised version of the Bible, a Century dictionary, a storage battery a safety razor, an egg
incubator, a milk separator, nor a hospital using an xray or an antiseptic.

That is a rapid rate at which we have been flying through the vistas of human progress
since Richard Chard was born in the year of grace--1832. He matched all the workers
with brain with his workmanship of brawn and his full share in transforming the
swampy wilderness into a garden of the Lord,
and proved himself a friend and neighbor to those around him
in those perilous years when disease and death lurked in every section of
the community. It is more healthier and happier to live now because he, with others
like him, blazed the way for our coming. To be sure it costs more to live now than then
but unquestionably it is worth more; and we owe this pioneer a debt of gratitude which
tests the greatness of our hearts to pay.