Very little is known about Elsie’s girlhood. She probably visited Ipswich during the summer months to enjoy the countryside, beach, and her family’s ancestral home – today’s Heard House Museum. By the age of 22 she was a skilled enough artist to enroll in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (SMFA). There, while living at 82 Chestnut Street on Beacon Hill, she studied with the great Frank W. Benson, Edmund C. Tarbell, Anson K. Cross, E.W. Emerson, and possibly Otto Grundman.

In 1894, Elsie’s father died, in the family home at 53 Chestnut Street, and she no doubt assumed the care of her aging mother. In 1898, mother and daughter were honored guests at the Ipswich Historical Society’s first annual “Antique Supper.” Elsie’s father had been a founding member of the Society, which was initially organized in 1890.

Elsie received her diploma from the SMFA in 1899, but it is not known what works of original art she produced. She was a skilled copyist, however, and several of her paintings may still be seen in Ipswich. Her imitation of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of her ancestor, John Heard, is remarkable. She also copied portraits of Rev. Thomas Franklin Waters, the founder of the Ipswich Historical Society, and Charles M. Kelly, president of the First National Bank of Ipswich. Perhaps her favorite subject, though, was her infant brother “Georgie,” who died before he reached his second birthday.

Elsie’s mother died in 1917, and it is unclear how she spent her days. During World War I, Elsie volunteered for the Red Cross, probably rolling bandages or packing and shipping parcels for soldiers serving overseas. She no doubt maintained an interest in Ipswich Historical Society activities, and visited the family home more frequently which her brother, John, his wife, Grace Clifford, and their children John, Grace, and Marileeds, now occupied.

In 1930, John died, leaving the house to Elsie. Grace, his widow, moved to the Washington, D.C. area. Elsie found the mansion difficult to maintain, and in 1936 she sold her home to the Ipswich Historical Society with the stipulation that she be allowed to reside there as long as she chose. She kept a bedroom and a private office while the Society worked to restore the rest of the house and open it for tours to the public.

In late 1949 or early 1950, Elsie returned to Boston -- to an apartment in the Back Bay’s grand Hotel Vendome. There, according to the Herald-Traveler, “elderly Bostonians, or at least retired Bostonians, many of them of the highest social register standing, took up year round residency.”

Elsie died just a few years later in 1953, in nearby Brookline, probably in a private medical facility. She was 85. An anonymous “devoted friend” paid tribute to her in the Ipswich Chronicle, writing, “to those who loved her (and who indeed did not?) her quick and charming sense of humor was a delight. It was never marred by the least suspicion of mockery, of intolerance, or of unkindness. Her joy in all things beautiful went hand in hand with her lifelong devotion to the art of painting.”

Today, the Heard House Museum proudly displays a plaque in Elsie’s memory, her dollhouse, portraits of John Heard and Thomas Franklin Waters, and her fine Victorian easel.

Sources:

Files of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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

Alice Leeds Heard correspondence files, Ipswich Historical Society.

Herald-Traveler, 6 June 1970.

Ipswich Chronicle, 24 Sept., 1953; 23 Dec. 1898.

Salem Evening News, 16 Sept. 1953.