John Heard (1744-1834)

The son of Daniel Heard and Mary Dane, John Heard followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a housewright. The Heards were considered part of the “artisan class;” little, or no, schooling was available to young John except what his parents taught him at home.

In 1766, John Heard married Elizabeth Ann Story (1745-75). They had five children, only three of whom survived: Joanna (1768-97), who married Asa Andrews; Elizabeth, who was born in 1771 but died two months later; another Elizabeth, who was born in 1772, but died a year later; Mary (1773-95), who married Job Harris of Portsmouth, N.H.; and John (1775-1839), who married Susan Oliver of Belmont.

In 1770, Heard went into business with his brother-in-law, William Story Jr., in the distillery of William Story Sr. Heard soon became sole owner, and expanded the business to include trade in the West Indies. He also began to acquire property in Ipswich, and was well on his way to becoming wealthy.

Elizabeth Story was 30 years old when she died in 1775, during the opening days of the Revolutionary War. John’s business interests now involved financing “privateers,” vessels that ran British blockades to keep goods flowing in and out of key ports. The activity was illegal under British law, but highly lucrative.

In February 1777, John Heard married Sarah “Sally” Staniford (1751-96); in March, he purchased land and a “homestead” on South Main Street in Ipswich. Along with the three surviving children of his first marriage, John and Sally produced Daniel Staniford (1778-1801), who died in China; Sarah (1780-1801); Elizabeth (1782-1805); Margaret (1783-1829), who married Dr. Thomas Manning; Augustine (1785-1868); Charles (1786-1815); Hannah Staniford (1789-1824), who married Sidney Willard of Beverly; George Washington (1793-1863), who married Elizabeth Ann Farley; and Mary (1796-1869).

The same year he married Sally, 1777, John began a lengthy career in public service that showed true devotion to his home town. In 1777, he was “Clerk of the Market,” “Hog-Reeve,” a member of the Committee of Correspondence & Safety, and a member of what we would now call the local draft board. He was appointed Coroner of Essex County in 1778, a position he held until 1796.

After the Revolutionary War, John Heard’s “interests in ships concentrated in long term investments rather than in single voyages,” according to his biographer, Edward W. Hanson. His ships sailed to the West Indies and Virginia, later, to China and India.

Heard’s political career resumed in 1788, when he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Federalist, and again in 1792 and 1793. In 1795, he served as moderator of the Ipswich Town Meeting. Later that year, John Heard began construction on a grand mansion on South Main Street that would serve as a testament to his wealth, refinement, and devotion to Ipswich. Unlike many successful merchants who followed the evolution of maritime trade to Salem or Boston, Heard chose to remain in Ipswich.

In 1796, Sally Staniford Heard died, leaving John a widower with children for the second time. Later that year, he was elected a Town Selectman. In 1799, Heard was appointed Justice of the Peace by Governor Increase Sumner. By 1800, when his new house was complete, Heard took up residence with a large household of grown children and probably 2-3 live-in servants. (Edward Hanson, Heard’s biographer, notes that in the 1790 census, the members of John Heard’s household “could be accounted for among his immediate family, except for one male above sixteen and a female, who were perhaps servants along with the one ‘other free person,’ a black servant.”)

In 1803, Heard was elected to the Massachusetts Senate where he remained until 1811. In 1814, he became a Sessions Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Essex County which he served until 1820. In 1828, he purchased a share in the new Ipswich Female Seminary.

When John Heard died in 1834 at the age of 90, he could look back on a life of enormous accomplishment and fulfillment, from modest housewright to Senator and Justice of the Peace with sons who would carry on the family’s simultaneous international engagement and devotion to Ipswich. His descendants lived in the mansion he had built until 1936, when Alice Heard sold it to the Ipswich Historical Society.

Sources:
Edward W. Hanson, The Heards of Ipswich, Massachusetts (privately published, 1986).