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BYRON M. WIARD.

Handsome Interior of Wiard's Jewelry Store.

All the various lines of business considered, there is none dearer to the feminine heart than all elegant, well-selected stock of jewelry, all the latest fads and designs like those found in the elegant show cases of Byron M. Wiard's store, or the valuable and delicately chased patterns of silverware exhibited on the commodious plate glass encased wall shelves. It is one of Mr. Wiard's characteristics to recommend only such goods as merit an investment, and this admirable trait has gained for him the confidence of his customers and its natural following - a wide patronage. In the watch repairing department he has secured the services of "Billie" Nyman, whose reputation as a jeweler is well established in Concordia.

Mr. Wiard originally halls from central Illinois, where he was born in 1856. His parents were Rolland and Mary (Wright) Wiard, both of New York birth. Norman Wiard, manufacturer of the Wiard gun, is a relative. The Wiards settled at Elgin, Illinois, in an early day. Mr. Wiard's father, died in 1875, and his mother was deceased in 1881. Mr. Wiard is a twin, and one of a family of seven children. His twin brother, Myron, is a jeweler of San Diego, California. At the age of seventeen years Mr. Wiard began his career and after three years in a cigar store with a brother in Waukegan, he decided the jewelry business would be more to his tastes, and consequently joined another brother in Breckenridge, Colorado, in 1880. Four years subsequently he came to Kansas, when the state was booming and its many virtues being heralded abroad, and after looking over several probable points he favored Concordia. Of the jewelers who were here at that time he is the only one remaining. Mr. Wiard has prospered. He erected the building he now occupies, in 1887, a two-story brick, twenty-two by one hundred feet in dimensions, but he expects to occupy the spacious rooms where the Kelly stock of goods is being closed out, on Main street, first door east of Layton & Neilson's drug store.

Dr. Ida Wiard.

Mr. Wiard was married to Miss Ida Wones, a Concordia young woman, who was educated in the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph. After having spent two years of study in optics Mrs. Wiard entered the McCormick Optical School of Chicago in 1901, and from that institution in ophthalmology, she returned to Concordia and established a complete line of optics, in connection with the jewelry store, and has had the entire management of that department ever since. Dr. Wiard has given a very able series of "Eye Talks" through the columns of the Kansan, describing various defects of that organ, followed by the mode of treatment required to rectify the deficiency. In former years a woman was seldom known prominently in the professional world, but among instances where they have succeeded Dr. Wiard is distinctively one of that number, pursuing optics with the greatest efficiency. She is a woman of charming personality, as well as skill and ability, and assuming the responsibilities of a profession have not detracted from her refired womanhood. Dr. Wiard is a member of the American Association of Graduates in Ophthalmology. Mr. and Mrs. Wiard are the parents of one child, a bright and winsome little daughter, aged nine.