Heard

Heard is on Farm Road 1051 and the Dry Frio River, two miles north of Reagan Wells in north central Uvalde County. It was probably named after Augustin Heard, an early settler in the area. The community established a post office at Heard's ranch in 1876; Gus Heard's son, W. D., served as postmaster from 1876 until 1891, when the family moved to Sabinal. The population of the Heard community was eighty-five in 1890, when J. H. Lafferty was constable and D. H. Tucker, justice of the peace. In 1897 a post office called Bowles was established on the T. D. Heard ranch, at the edge of the Heard community, with Mrs. Heard as postmaster. In 1900 thirty-six students attended the one-teacher Heard school. The school building was used for many years, beginning in 1915, by the Dry Frio Baptist Church, formerly called Exile Baptist Church. Mrs. R. H. Pickens, a member of the Dry Frio Baptist Church, in 1917 began a fund-raising effort to build a permanent church; only in 1962 was the fund large enough to construct a new church between Heard and Reagan Wells. In 1946 Heard was a sparsely settled community with a cemetery and a school called the Reagan Wells School. By 1945 the schoolhouse was owned by the Reagan Wells Cemetery Association and was being used as a community center. In 1971 Heard had a few scattered dwellings near the cemetery and the Heard Community Center. The community center was still in use in 1990; within it was displayed a service roll of Civil War veterans.