| The son of George Washington Heard (1793-1863)
and Elizabeth Ann Farley Heard (1802-65), Augustine
received a fine early education to prepare him for
Harvard College where he graduated in 1847. During
the next ten years, except for a return trip to the
United States in 1851-2 for health reasons, he was “employed
by his uncle Augustine Heard, the head of the trading,
banking, and shipping firm Augustine Heard & Co. – one
of the largest firms operating in China,” according
to Heard genealogist Edward W. Hanson. Augustine
worked in the main office at Canton, which was moved
to Hong Kong in 1856 at the outbreak of the second
Anglo-Chinese war.
According to Hanson, as an agent of the firm,
Augustine Heard was said to have been the first
Western businessman permitted to trade in Siam
when he traveled there in 1855. In 1858, while
in Baltimore, he married Jane Leep deConnick, the
daughter of Belgium’s consul at Havana, Cuba.
For the next several years, Heard represented Augustine
Heard & Co. in Europe, primarily in England,
France, Belgium, and Russia. At the time it was
said that “Mr. Heard’s carriage and
his wife’s jewels were as fine as any in
Paris.” Clearly, they lived on a grand scale.
Although Augustine Heard & Co. failed in the
early 1870s (as many American houses doing business
in the Far East did), Heard spent a number of years
in the Orient afterward. From 1890-94, he was appointed
U.S. Minister to Korea by President Benjamin Harrison.
He was decorated with the Order of Leopold by King
Leopold of Belgium, a high honor.
Augustine’s wife died in 1899. His later
years were spent in Europe and Washington, D.C.
He died in 1905 aboard the steamship Koung Albert
off Gibraltar, while on a voyage home from Italy.
He had outlived two children: his son Augustine
died as an infant; John died at age 36. Of his
other children, Augustine Albert became involved
in railroads; Amelia married Russell Gray, who
headed the American Mutual Liability Insurance
Company; and Helen Maxima, who married Max Von
Brandt, an officer in the Prussian army, later
a Prussian Consul for the North German Federation,
German Resident Minister in Japan, German Minister
Plenipotentiary to China, and a distinguished author
of books on Far Eastern affairs and Chinese history.
Today, the Heard House Museum proudly displays
a dignified, full-figure portrait of Augustine
Heard.
Source: Edward W. Hanson, The Heards of Ipswich,
Massachusetts (privately published, 1986).
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