Albert was the fourth child of George Washington Heard (1793-1863) and Elizabeth Ann Farley Heard (1802-65). Unlike his father and brothers, he attended Yale University where he graduated in 1853. He went to China shortly thereafter to join his uncle’s company, Augustine Heard & Co. In 1868, he married Mary Allen Livingston of Livingston, N.Y., a descendant of the French Admiral de Grasse.

Except for an occasional journey to the United States, Heard remained in China until 1875. In 1877, he represented the Lowell Gun Company in Russia. According to Heard genealogist Edward W. Hanson, “it was probably about this period that he was the official representative from China to Russia for several years. From 1880 to 1882, he was manager of a metallurgical foundery in Bayonne, France. In December of 1882, his wife, from whom he was divorced, died at her Paris apartment.

Heard left France for Washington, D.C. where he served as private secretary to William C. Endicott, Secretary of War, and later as librarian for the U.S. Army. His interest in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church led him to publish The Russian Church and Russian Dissent in 1889. He died childless in 1890.

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