Dwight Bancroft Heard was an American investment banker, farmer, and publisher. He was one of the largest landowners in the Salt River Valley, Arizona.
Background
Dwight Heard was born on May 1, 1869, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Leander Bradford and Lucy (Bancroft) Heard. He was a descendant of Zachariah Heard, born in 1675, who lived in Cambridge and later in Sudbury, now Wayland, Massachusetts. Leander Heard was engaged in the wholesale grocery business and was especially interested in building up trade with the W.
Education
Dwight received a public-school education which terminated in the Brookline, Massachusetts, high school.
Career
At the age of seventeen Dwight Heard went to work for the wholesale hardware firm of Hibbard, Spencer & Bartlett, Chicago. Because of impaired health Heard went to the Southwest in 1894, and, after spending some time in Texas, in 1895 he settled in Phoenix, Arizona. Here he engaged in the investment and loan business and in farming. His principal interests were the Dwight B. Heard Investment Company, and the Bartlett-Heard Land & Catde Company, the holdings of which included 7, 000 acres of land near Phoenix. This land was intensively cultivated with a view to turning it into small homesteads, a purpose which Heard saw well on the way toward realization. Upon the affairs of the growing territory he exerted a dominating influence.
Heard took an energetic part in opposing a bill for the admission of Arizona and New Mexico into the Union as one state; attended and read a paper at the conference of governors called by President Roosevelt in 1908 to consider measures for the conservation of natural resources; and was active in various phases of war work during the World War. In 1912 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and one of the signers of the call for the Progressive Convention, to which also he was a delegate. This same year his interest in the Progressive movement led him to secure control of the Arizona Republican.
Heard was one of the foremost advocates of the development of the Colorado River with full protection of Arizona’s rights. He was long a member of the United States Chamber of Commerce, serving as a director and as chairman of the agricultural division. Among his manifold activities was that of promoting the cultivation of long staple cotton in Arizona. In the interest of this enterprise he visited Egypt, and published “Cotton and the Sudan” in the American Review of Reviews, July 1926, a periodical to which he was an occasional contributor.
Achievements
Politics
Heard was interested in politics only as a part of good citizenship. In 1924 he accepted the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona and was defeated by a majority of 800, although the normal opposition majority was 15, 000.
Membership
Heard was president of the American National Live Stock Association.
Interests
Heard was interested in American antiquities. He had in his private museum a considerable collection of New England antiquities and specimens of the crafts of primitive peoples.
Connections
On August 10, 1893, Dwight Heard married Maie Pitkin Bartlett, daughter of A. C. Bartlett, president of the firm. One child, a son, was born to them.