Since finding in 1982 a cache of letters written in the 1880s - 1890s in the papers of my father, Augstine Heard Gray, my hobby has been transcribing and translating his mother's journals and letters and researching the people and places occuring in the material. Through the past four decades I have written several articles for family, friends, and few historians on stories relating to Amy's ancestors, friends, and their relatives and stories.
In recent years I have made an effort to update, merge, and unify the material and to provide background and context for the many stories included. On 24 September 2021 I posted a draft of the result as Amy Heard: Historical Traces.
This online book is a work-in-progress and is updated regularly as new material is incorporated and old corrected and revised.
Most recent update: 14 September 2024.
During recent years the editing of the journals and letters has been supplemented additional information regarding their historical context, which is now provided in the first part of the book. The book focuses on several generations of the Taylor, De Coninck, Heard, and Gray families, but it is a book of stories revealed by the journals and letters rather than a book on genealogy. The extensive new background material researched and written during the pandemic and since now provides background and insight into the letters and journals and the people and places in them.
Because many of my earlier writings on Amy have found their way
into citations in other web pages as well as published articles and
books, I am leaving the earlier manuscripts available as they were
with links on this page so that they remain available. The new
manuscript corrects many errors in the earlier docments which have
propagated on the Web and elsewhere. Perhaps the most notable error
is the confusion of names Amelia and Amalia in reference to both
places and people. Usually it turns out the names are equivalent,
just variants of the same name (along with Amelie). Rather than
change my earlier writings, I will just state that I am more
confident in the historical facts and conjectures in the new
edition.
The older manuscripts with links below are incorporated into the
new manuscript, with the exception of the two articles on the poisoning
incident in Hong Kong.
Some additional related supporting material is also available.
In 2004 a photo album was found in a Baltimore junkyard. Finding Amy Heard and Max Heard named on the back of some photos, the finders tracked me down through the Internet. These 1870s-1880s photos, which include pictures of Amy, Max, and Jane Heard along with several unidentified people are viewable at http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~gray/Baltimore_Heard/. Some of the photographs are by the most famous photographers of the time, including Mathew Brady. I suspect the unidentified photos are relatives of Jane Leep DeConinck's mother, Amelia Williams (Taylor) De Coninck of Baltimore.
The book consists primarily of letters written to Amy Heard during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, especially from her friend Victoria Sackville-West, the mother of writer Vita Sackville-West, and her sisters. Extensive commentary places the letters in context and describes many of the people mentioned.
During summer 2005 I finally began adding the original French versions of the letters, and have corrected many transcription and translation errors.
Transcriptions and translations of letters from Amy's Heard's sister Max and her parents from Seoul, Korea, to Amy during the period 1891-1893 during which Amy's father, Augustine Heard, was the U.S. Minister to Korea. The main story in the letters is the romance between Max and Max von Brandt, the German minister to Peking. A second story is the difficult adjustment of an American family to life in Seoul. The letters are being included in both the original French and in translation. I am slowly adding commentary and footnotes on the people mentioned in the letters and on Korea of that period. A pdf is also available, but the photo quality is not good as my scanning talents are inadequate.
Jean Brown has kindly provided three items relating to Mrs. Greathouse, who is mentioned in Max & Max. These are A newspaper article describing Mrs. Greathouse's adventures in Korea following her return, a short biography of Clarence Greathouse from the Dictionary of American Biography, and Chapter X on Greathouse from the Fantastic City San Francisco historical Website.
Memoirs by Albert Farley Heard and Augustine Heard, Jr.
Poisoning by Wholesale: A Reminiscence of China Life A manuscript by Albert Farley Heard written during the 1880s regarding the panic in China in 1857.
The Poisoning in HongKong --- An Episode of Life in China, Forty Years Another memoir of the Hong Kong poisoning incident, this time by Augustine Heard, Albert Farley Heard's brother. Written about 1894.
An extensive genealogy of the Heard family by Rev. Edmund W. Hanson is posted here with his permission.
Permission is hereby given to freely print and circulate copies of these items so long as it is left intact, proper acknowledgement is given, and the material is not reproduced for commercial purposes. The author would welcome all reports of typos and comments.