User:Bandit6d/Dr. E. H. Ward Farm

Dr. Edward Hiram Ward (August 1829 – June 1896) was the son of Hiram Ward (1794 – 1842) and Sara Hackney (1806 – 1848) and lived in Chatham County, North Carolina.

The first Edward Ward, settler, was a landowner and sailed from London to America and settled in Pitt County in 1704. He was the grandson of Sir Edward Ward, a London judge, who presided at the trial of pirate William Kidd, and sentenced him to be hanged on Tryburn Wall in London.

Early records show the Ward name in New England and others in the Roanoke Valley in Virginia.

According to family tradition, Dr. E. H. Ward came to Chatham County to establish his medical practice about 1850. Upon arriving in Chatham County, Ward settled into a two-room log cabin on the banks of Ward’s Creek, near the present site of his farm complex. This site was only a short distance from Hackney’s Crossroads, which was located approximately one mile south of the present site of the Ward Farm Complex, on what is now SR 1700. A large farm, post office, and general store, located at Hackney’s Crossroads, in 1850, probably induced Dr. Ward to settle nearby.

Although family tradition provides the only information about Ward’s background as a physician, his training and practice was probably similar to other rural North Carolina doctors during the middle of the nineteenth century. Ward was born in 1829, perhaps in Orange County. Prior to 1850 there were at least fifteen medical apprenticeship schools in North Carolina where Ward could have begun his medical training. Two of these were located in the piedmont region, close to Orange and Chatham Counties, and Ward may have attended one of these. Family tradition states that at some point during his career, Ward studied at Johns Hopkins University. It is not possible to confirm this tradition, but North Carolina physicians and medical students did attend out of state medical schools. In 1840 eighty-seven North Carolinians were studying medicine in other states.

A few years after his arrival in Chatham County, Dr. Ward established a small farmstead. He may have done this to supplement his income as a rural physician, many of whom only realized about $300 a year in income. Ward, according to family tradition, purchased the land, where the farm complex is now located, just before the Civil War and moved his two-room cabin there.

The Civil War only briefly interrupted Ward’s career as a physician and small farmer. He enlisted in March of 1862 as the Captain of Company B, Forty-Ninth North Carolina Regiment. This company was formed with men from the area of Jones’ Grove on the east side of the Haw River between Bynum and Chapel Hill. Ward, the company’s first commander, resigned soon after assuming command. Ward’s reason for resigning is unknown, but family tradition speculates that he may have hired a conscript to take his place.

Following the Civil War, Dr. Ward continued his medical practice as well as his farming activities. The combination of a medical practice and farming operation was not uncommon in rural North Carolina. Ward married Savannah Horton during the mid 1860s and fathered his first of eight children at the age of thirty-eight in 1867.

During the late 1860s or early 1870s, as his family began to grow, Ward probably began to expand and remodel his older log home. The cabin was covered with wooden weatherboards and a similar one-story weatherboard section was added to the front of the older section. Ward also probably constructed the one-story office structure in the late 1860s or early 1870s to give himself more privacy in the practice of his profession.

Evidently Dr. Ward’s farming operations and medical practice were successful, for by the time Ward was fifty years of age, in 1880, he had amassed an estate that was larger than most of his Chatham County neighbors. In 1880, when the average farm in North Carolina contained only 142 acres, Ward owned 230 acres of land valued at $1,200. Including his other property, Ward’s total estate was valued at $1,732 in 1880. At a time when the size of many farms in the state was decreasing, Ward was expanding his land holdings. By the time of his death in 1896, when the average North Carolina farm contained only 142 acres, Ward’s estate contained 344 acres.

Following Ward’s death, several of his sons and daughters occupied the farm’s main house. His only daughter, Jenneverette, occupied the house for some time and then one of Ward’s seven sons rented the house from Ward’s estate. It was during this period in the early twentieth century that the rear well and some of the outbuildings were probably added. The son, J. B. Ward later purchased the house from the estate and raised his family there. His daughter, Mrs. C. R. Brown, became the final Ward descendant to own and occupy the property.

On July 5, 1985 the Dr. E. H. Ward Farm was registered on The National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

Additional Historical Notes

In close proximity to the Wards Farm was the Horton Farm, where George Moses Horton, Historic Slave Poet Laureate of Chatham County, North Carolina

It is believed that Dr. Ward died from pneumonia, possibly riding in the snow or cold rain on one of his many house calls. Since there were no antibiotics in his day, one’s own body defenses were the only hope of surviving. He died at the age of 65 and was buried next to the Mt. Gilead Baptist Church in Chatham County with his wife, Savannah Catherine Horton and several of his children and grandchildren.

Family tradition states that Dr. Ward had saddlebags with obstetrical forceps on one side and surgical (appendectomy) instruments on the other side. He would leave home on horseback and would be gone for days going from house to house where he was needed by his patients.

One page of Dr. Ward’s ledger noted: 1874 	JAMES FOSSTER JUNE 3 	ONE VISIT TO CHILD 	$1.50 NOV 20 	MEDICINE FOR CHILD 	.25 1875 	 	 MARCH 31 	ONE VISIT TO CHILD 	1.50 FOR PINE ROOT AND CALAMETL 	.25 MAY 1 	FOR MEDICINE 	.40 PAID BY CASH 	6.00 PAID BY WHEAT AND BASKET 	2.35 1876 	 	 APRIL 3 	4 DOSES OF PINK ROOT AND CALMET 	.40 APRIL 11 	ONE VISIT TO WIFE 	1.50 PAID BY CASH 	1.00