Person:John Ward (194)

... It was at "Morrisania," the old Morris place in Westchester, that my father met my mother for the first time. She was Sarah Hartley Ward, the daughter of Colonel John Ward, of Carolina, and was making the Morrises a visit with her sister Mary, who also met her future husband, Gouverneur Morris Wilkins, on this occasion. I have heard that the coming of the Misses Ward from Charleston to New York was something of an event in the restricted society of that time, and doubtless many young men were interested in the advent of these heiresses. ...

... I wish I could remember my grandfather Ward. He seems to have been an ideal grandfather. My mother often told us about the Christmas parties he used to give in Charleston, how he played with the children and told them delightful stories and kept them all in a flutter of happiness.

Colonel Ward's grandfather, also named John, came from England and was shipwrecked on his way to Carolina, saving nothing but a fat gold watch with St. George and the dragon on the back, which I now have. Colonel Ward, who served in the United States army in the War of 1812, was a distinguished lawyer and for some time president of the Senate of South Caroina. The diary of Edward Hooker, of Hartford, who chronicled his impressions of the South in 1807, while a professor at the University of South Carohna, describes my grandfather as president of the Senate, "wearing a long light blue satin robe edged with white fur." He goes on to say: "A more pleasing speaker I have rarely heard; he has at command a rich stock of words and ideas, and speaks entirely in the Sheridanean dialect, which is used by most educated Charlestonians. Mr. Ward is a small man — pleasant and facetious disposition, penetrating look, quick and graceful in motion, dignified when in the chair but a little prone to levity when out of it."

My Grandfather Ward was a planter as well as a lawyer. His plantation on John's Island was called Seven
Oaks from a huge seven-branched live-oak on the place. I have a large dinner-set of pink Lowestoft china that was buried on John's Island during the Revolution when the British pillaged the neighborhood, after being driven out of their earthworks in the battle of Stony [Stono] Ferry. All treasures that were not carefully hidden were stolen or destroyed. It must have been quite a job to bury all that china — over a hundred pieces.

Colonel Ward married Mary Somersall. In an interesting picture by Copley which I have she is represented as a young girl standing by the seated figures of her mother and grandmother, Mrs. Thomas Hartley. A little child, a cousin, who was afterward Mrs. Deas, with a small dog, complete the family group. The picture is unusual, as it shows three generations of mothers and daughters; the figure of the old lady is especially well painted.

My grandfather Ward is buried in Trinity Churchyard in New York, next to the tomb of Alexander Hamilton. ...

Issue of September 30, 1868
Marriage and Death Notices in the (Charleston) Times, 1800-1820, Holcomb, p 303
"Died, suddenly, on the morning of the 19th inst, at New-York, Col. John Ward, of this city."

John Ward was the eleventh intendent (mayor) of Charleston, South Carolina, serving one term from 1801 to 1802. ...