By Karla Browne March 4, 2003

Details of her life are sketchy. Few still are living who could remember her. But one fact is certain: Louise Beard was a well-loved daughter. Born June 11, 1894, in Newport, she was the only child of Horace Beard and Katherine Leiby Howe Beard.

The couple married in 1889 and that year built the home at 129 N. Second St., a block north of the Newport square, where Louise was born five years later. She attended Newport public schools, the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and a school for young women in Paris. Returning to her birthplace in the bustling railroad town on the Juniata River, Louise became active in the community's social life. She was a member of Episcopal Church of the Nativity on South Second Street, Newport Civic Club, Women's Club, Red Cross and Perry County Historical Society, and volunteered for Newport Public Library.

At the turn of the century, the Victorian home on Second Street was the setting for parties, entertainments, meetings and play practices, wrote the late Margaret Rupp, Louise's aunt. Gardens bloomed all spring and summer with tulip bulbs and rose slips handed down from Louise's grandparents.

Louise's passing left her mother alone. Horace Beard died in 1911 at age 52. Widowed and childless at the age of 76, Katherine Beard set to work with her sister to turn the 13-room home into a memorial to three generations of her family's history, a task she accomplished before her death in 1938. But when Katherine Beard named the memorial and museum, she chose the name of her daughter.