like Heard a native of Union Parish. Thomas was thereafter the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana from 1922 to 1930 and had also served as Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representative from 1912 to 1916. Governor Heard appointed former Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham, a lawyer from both Natchitoches and New Orleans, to a four-year term as the public administrator of Orleans Parish. Heard carried on a correspondence with a young state representative, Harry D. Wilson of Tangipahoa Parish, who in 1916 was elected to the first of eight terms as the Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry. Wilson petitioned Heard to permit the establishment of the town of Independence, 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 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