Sarah Harper Heard

Sarah Harper Heard (1853 – April 9, 1919) was an American educator, activist, librarian, and gardener. Well-educated and interested in many topics, Heard was described by an acquaintance as "one of those magnificent Victorian women who had a super-charged energy, which home life could never use up".

Early life Heard was born in Newton County, Georgia in 1853 to John H. Harper and Susan Rebecca Oliver. She married Eugene B. Heard, former president of Georgia Stephen Heard's grandson, when she was 19 years old; the couple moved into the Heard family's 2,000-acre Rose Hill Plantation in Elbert County. Together with the Atlanta Woman's Club and its founder Rebecca Lowe, she founded the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs. to have the company transport books to every railroad stop; these small libraries came to be called "S.A.L. Magundi Clubs". St.John went on to contact Andrew Carnegie, who donated $1,000 towards the effort and called Heard "the right woman at the right time".

In a 1901 special edition titled "Free Traveling Libraries", Seaboard's promotional magazine S.A.L. Magundi published an assortment of letters communicating with and praising Heard, written by notable figures including President William McKinley, the governor of Alabama, Florida governor William Sherman Jennings, Georgia governor Allen D. Candler, North Carolina governor Charles Brantley Aycock, South Carolina governor Miles Benjamin McSweeney, Virginia governor James Hoge Tyler, Andrew Carnegie, and Georgia State School Superintendent G.R. Glenn.

Heard worked to establish twelve "McKinley libraries" in 1902, dedicated to "the characteristics and high ideals so exemplified in the life and purposes of [President William] McKinley". The traveling library system won a gold medal award at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition in Virginia.

Following the death of Georgia Library Association president Walter B. Hill in 1905, Heard was appointed to fill the role and went on to serve four terms as president and longer after that as second president.

Gardening A master gardener, Heard played a crucial role in developing the Elberta peach. She also took care of the gardens around Rose Hill, which would go on to be featured in the 1933 University of Georgia Press book The Garden History of Georgia 1733–1933. Thomas, who died at the age of 12.

Legacy In 2016, Heard was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame.