Biweekly Newsletter March 14, 2026

​An Easton woman you may not know of- Fidelia Reed Heard (August 13, 1822 – February 22, 1895) travelled to Antarctica with her husband on her honeymoon and in the process learned to read maritime measurements. She and her husband, Captain John Jay Heard, were the first to spot Heard Island, an Antarctic Island, and she was the first to describe it in writing and the first to sketch it. The island’s isthmus is named Fidelia isthmus after her. Fidelia’s journal was a key source in documenting the discovery in 1853. The research material she compiled on the voyage is still referenced by scholars. Fidelia was Olive Reed’s granddaughter. Fidelia was the daughter of Olive’s son Daniel Reed and Sally Wild Reed.

​The first written description from Fidelia Heard’s journal:

"At 10 o'clock the Captain was walking on deck and saw what he supposed to be an immense iceberg. … the atmosphere was hazy, and then a heavy snow squall came up which shut it out entirely from our view. Not long after the sun shone again, and I went up again and with the glass, tried to get an outline of it to sketch its form. The sun seemed so dazzling on the water, and the tops of the apparent icebergs covered with snow; the outline was very indistinct. We were all the time nearing the object and on looking again the Captain pronounced it to be land. The Island is not laid down on the chart, neither is it in the Epitome, so we are perhaps the discoverers, … I think it must be a twin to Desolation Island, it is certainly a frigid looking place."

After her husband died in 1862 Fidelia turned to teaching to support herself and her 2 children. She ran a kindergarten in Concord Hall in Concord and in 1895 the Boston Evening Transcript called her a “pioneer” of the kindergarten movement. A strong Easton woman. In honor of Women’s History Month.

Come to our Open House on Sunday, March 22nd to learn about more strong Easton women!
 
Anne Wooster Drury