Augustine Heard (1785-1868)

As a boy living in a coastal town populated by ship owners, sailors, and shipwrights, Augustine Heard grew up hearing stories about far away lands and the fortunes that could be made. His father, John Heard (1744-1834), had accumulated significant wealth through trade in the West Indies. His older half-brother, Daniel (1778-1801), served as a super-cargo on board ships that sailed to Surinam, India, and China. When he died in Canton from illness, Augustine was 16 years old.

At the age of 14, Augustine had been sent to Phillips Academy in Exeter, N.H., but he did not graduate. While his mother, Sarah Staniford Heard (1751-96), whose father had graduated from Harvard College, no doubt wanted her son to pursue his education, Augustine had his own ideas.

The Sea Beckons

By 1803, as a young man of 18, Augustine Heard was working for Ebenezer Francis, a prominent Boston merchant. In 1805, Heard sailed to Calcutta on one of Francis’s ships as a “supercargo,” or business manager. By 1812, he was “master” of his first vessel, the brig Caravan. As John Heard’s biographer, Edward Hanson, described Augustine, Heard’s “skill as a navigator and success as a merchant were of such a high order that he soon became one of the foremost captains in the East India trade, and he had the choice of some of the best ships trading with the Orient.”

Heard’s many and lucrative voyages took him to Calcutta, Canton, St. Jago, “Leghorn,” Genoa, “Bahia,” Rio de Janeiro, Liverpool, and ports in Spain, negotiating treacherous waters during the War of 1812, pirates, weather conditions, near shipwrecks, and the constant threat of illness. Augustine Heard could be trusted to negotiate trade routes and business dealings with equal success.

The China Years

In 1830, Heard ended his active sea career when he sailed for Canton, China, at the age of 45, to become a partner in the famous firm of Samuel Russell & Company in which he held a partial interest. Poor health forced his return to Boston in 1834, where he managed his business affairs from his office on Tremont Street. He also became acquainted with and very attached to his four nephews, the sons of his brother George Washington Heard, who were all living in Boston.

By 1838, Russell & Company was exhibiting the internal “friction” that led to its dissolution. Heard had authorized one of his overseas partners, John Murray Forbes, to “form a new establishment if he considered it expedient,” according to the historian Thomas Franklin Waters. Another partner and friend, Joseph Coolidge, was acting on behalf of Augustine Heard in China. Soon, the company was reconfigured under the name “Augustine Heard and Co.” Among the their many accomplishments was the introduction of steam ships to China.

In 1841, Heard decided to return to Canton, taking his 17-year-old nephew, John, with him. It was the height of the “Opium Wars,” a series of armed struggles between China and western countries who wanted more control over Chinese ports and the ability to import and export opium legally. While Heard’s company was directly involved in opium sales, they also traded in Chinese tea, silk, and New England cotton.

According to Hanson, Augustine Heard “had the confidence and respect of the Chinese, as well as of his competitors and employees…His firm was one of the four to survive the competition of decades at Canton. In that highly individualistic period of American foreign policy, it had an important influence in shaping the Far Eastern policy of his government.” His “House” also survived mob uprisings and attacks.

At some point during his years in China, Augustine Heard befriended a Chinese woman who served as his “hostess” for social and business gatherings. Her portrait, which is on exhibit at the Heard House, shows a lovely woman from minor royalty. To date, nothing else is known about her, including her name; Heard family oral tradition maintains the two had a mutually warm relationship, and Augustine Heard never married.

Retirement

From 1844 to 1853, Heard made many short trips to England, the Havre, Boston, and Ipswich, presumably for business purposes but essentially in retirement from his active role in managing Augustine Heard & Co. Along with young John, three more nephews “served their term” in China to learn the family business, including Augustine Heard II, Albert Farley Heard, and George Washington Heard Jr. Years later, when John Heard retired from his position as head of the House, he wrote, “I left the house firmly established, rich and second to no other American House in China. Indeed, I doubt if many would not have called it the first.”

By 1848, Heard was taking a renewed interest in goings-on in Ipswich. According to the historian Thomas Franklin Waters, “he was much attached to the mansion his father had built, and took pleasure in making repairs and improvements.” He also purchased adjacent land, adding to the already “spacious lot” the family enjoyed, and here he spent his “declining years” in the company of his sister, Mary Heard (1796-1869).

Augustine, his brother George and Joseph Farley (George’s brother-in-law) incorporated the Ipswich Manufacturing Company in 1848, which they hoped would have more success than the bankrupt Ipswich Lace Co. they had supported earlier; in 1852 Augustine became sole owner.

During the “dark days” of the Civil War, Augustine Heard contributed to the “relief of Ipswich soldiers and their families,” according to Waters. He donated globes to the Ipswich Female Seminary, and purchased shares to support it. His gifts were many over the years, but, his “great benefaction…was the gift of a Public Library to the town of his birth.” He selected the site, purchased the land, oversaw the plans, appointed the first trustees and librarian, selected the first three thousand volumes, and provided an endowment. Sadly, he died at home before the library was ready for use, on September 14, 1868.

At his funeral service, Augustine Heard was remembered as “a man of remarkable energy and decision…he wrought with great power and without noise, for his was not a heavy but an effective stroke…it was physical and intellectual power of a rare order…[but] to those who knew him at all intimately, his kindness and benevolence were, perhaps, the most impressive and stirring traits in his character.”

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

Thomas Franklin Waters, Augustine Heard and His Friends (Trustees of the Ipswich Public
Library, 1916).