General Notes

ID: I15683
Name: William WARD
Surname: WARD
Given Name: William
Sex: M
Birth: 15 May 1603 in Of Warrington,Lancashire,England
Christening: 15 May 1603 St. James Church,London,England
Death: 10 Aug 1687 in Marlboro,Middlesex,Massachusetts
Burial: Aug 1687 Springhill Cemetery,Marlborough,Middlesex,Massachusetts
Ancestral File #: 1WG8-RD
LDS Baptism: 8 Mar 1880 Temple: SGEOR
Endowment: 16 Jun 1898 Temple: SGEOR
_UID: 2174B3D0D820D61198EF00A0C9B25C4D4253
Sealing Child: status: SUBMITTED
Note:
First three children by first wife, Elizabeth PHILLIPUS. First six children born in England, balance of 13 children born in Massachusetts. William apparently emigrated to Sudbury between 12 Jul 1638 and 22 Jan 1640. Shipping records have not been found. First of this WARDE line in America, William WARDE dropped the final 'e' from the family name on his arrival in Massachusetts. All 13 children reached adulthood and married.


The following is an excerpt from "The William Ward Genealogy"
By Charles Martyn, copy written by Artemus Ward in 1925

Excerpts taken from ?The History of the Descendants of William Ward of Sudbury, Massachusetts, 1638-1925 By Charles Martyn

Author of "The life of Artemus Ward, the first Commander-in-chief of the American Revolution"
Published By Artemas Ward of the seventh generation, New York 1925
Copyright, 1925, by Artemus Ward


The Emigration of William Ward and his Family to the New World

William Ward "of Sudbury", head of the line, was born in England about 1603. He emigrated, probably in the spring of 1638, to the new Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England, bringing with him his second wife and five children. In the earliest records his name is written both "Ward" and "Warde"--at first, commonly with the final "e". Later, it appears consistently without the "e". In its original use, the name--with either spelling, or as "Weard," etc.--signified a guard, military or civil. The Privy Council registers show that several members of the Ward tribe got into trouble for disregard for royal edicts in "restraint of trade." On October 22, 1634, A. Warde was arrested for "divers misdemeanors and contempt?s, against his mats proclamation" concerning tobacco and for "abusing his Mats patentee for retailing of tobacco within ye town of Oswestri in ye county of Sallopp." Again on December 16, of the following year, Thomas Ward was up before Archbishop Laud and other members of the Privy Council in Star Chamber session, having been arrested "for going up and down the country with a Lyon?. A monopoly of that particular branch of the show business had been "granted" to a Mr. Gill, and he was the complainant whose protest resulted in the warrant.

By the time William was a young married man with little John and Joanna in his home, The Massachusetts Bay Colony had been formed. Joanna was still within her second year and John, the firstborn, only four, when a Puritan fleet of seventeen ships carried over more than a thousand souls in 1630. How long William planned his emigration with his family is not known. It is certain, that many days and still more numerous evenings were spent in absorbing cogitations. Finally came the decision that they too would stake out a home in the New World.... Then followed the plans and discussions of ways and means....

His family was larger now by the births of Obadiah, Richard, and Deborah. His first wife had died and he had taken a new partner--Elizabeth, whose tombstone may still be seen, in the old Spring Hill Cemetery of Marlborough, Massachusetts. It was resolved that they should make the voyage in the spring of 1638. That is at least an excellent guess, both because of the number who did go then and because of Ward's first appearance in Sudbury as a fellow settler with some of them. Then in the spring the journey to London by stagecoach... London may not have been entirely new to William Ward, but it probably was for his family.

Founding Sudbury, Massachusetts; William decided to join the Sudbury "plantation." Like minded were others among the newcomers. Fresh immigrants, indeed, constituted a majority of the first settlers, from forty to fifty in number, who thus placed themselves and their families on the outskirts of civilization. The General Court grant was intended to enclose about five miles square. As laid out, the tract fell short of this dimension, but the deficiency was made good by a second grant in 1640. The native title was obtained by purchase from the Indian "Cato", also known as "Karte" and "Goodman".

This territory touched that of Weston and Concord on the east and north. West and south stretched the wilderness, broken only by Indian villages. A few wigwams stood within its boundaries. Cato dwelt with his family and retainers on "Goodman's Hill"; Tantamous, a "powwowT, or medicine man, on Nobscot Hill; Nataous, or "Indian William," near Lake Cochituate. And the well-worn trails told of red men traversing the section to hunt and fish--for deer roamed and turkeys strutted through the woods; bears were at home in the highlands; and salmon, shad, pickerel, and alewives filled the river and streams. This wild food was as acceptable and nearly as important to the new white settlers as for centuries it had been to the Indians. The streams were also a favorite habitat of muskrats and beavers, the pelts of the latter being early rated as valuable merchandise. And grouse and other game birds were plentiful in their seasons. Pigeons were so prolifically numerous that settlers could not consume all they caught. After stripping off the feathers to make mattresses they fed them to the hogs.

Permission by the General Court "to go on in their plantation" was given September 6, 1638. Many of the settlers (William among them?) anticipated this formal authorization. They were at work with their ox-teams early in the summer, felling trees for their cabins, making rough roadways, mowing the meadows, and clearing logs and brush from patches selected for the planting of the first "common?, or community, fields. Great were the moments of the first town meetings which decided on the division of lands, on the roads to be laid out, on planting questions, on fences, and on all the other problems of community life, especially pioneer community life.

Four acres was the average size of the " house-lots," or home plots, agreed upon. The cabins of the SE pioneer families were small and of simple construction. A single story of whole and split logs, with two rooms at most in the beginning, with a wide log chimney covered and filled between with clay (the interstices of the walls being similarly closed), the roof of thatch, the windows of oiled paper, and the hearth of field stones. Some of the cabins were in all probability built chiefly of clay, timber being used only for the frames; or consisted of a timber (or timber and clay) front on a home cut into a hillside. They were mostly grouped for mutual companionship and protection, and were laid out east of the river, in the vicinity of the present Wayland Village, chiefly to its northwest and north. Twenty or more were situated in a row along the westerly side of the "Old Sudbury Road," northwesterly of its junction with Bow Road. They were not on the easterly side of Old Sudbury Road as generally stated.

Williams house-lot was on a road long discontinued--a fork of Glezen Lane which formerly ran northerly, from about the same point that Training Field Road forks easterly, into the first easterly turn of Moore Road and thus into the road to Concord. It was on the present Patterson farm, in the lee (the southerly side) of the first southerly slope west of the first easterly turn of Moore Road. One of its attractions was a good spring in the vicinity. Along this same road were the house-lots of Walter Haynes and William Pelham (two of the "principal men" in the early history of the settlement), Solomon Johnson, and John Freeman. After the cabins were roofed came the transportation from Boston and Watertown by slow two-wheel ox-drawn cars, and on horseback, of the store of food across the ocean, and corn and other produce purchased since arrival; and clothing, bedding, and a few pieces of furniture. With them or following them came the women and children. For travel on later occasions when there was nothing to bulky to carry, the settlers quickly adopted the Indian use of canoes and took to the rivers and streams as highways, finding this the easiest method of getting to various near-by points and, on occasion, to Boston. Several of the settlers brought families of fair size--from five to nine children of all ages. William had five children, as we have already noted John, the oldest, being in 1638 about twelve years of age; Joanna ten; Obadiah six; Richard three; and little Deborah, one.


The Founding of Sudbury

It is probable that early in 1639 the Sudbury settlers arranged a first division of meadow ("as much as shall be thought meet") on the following plan: "To every Mr. of a family 06 acres "To every wife 06 acres & 1/2 "To every child 01 acres & 1/2 "to Every Mare, Cow, ox or any other Cattle that may amount to 20 pound, or so much money 3 acres." Only the resolution has been preserved. There is no record of such a distribution. If made, William was entitled to twenty acres for his family alone.

About the same time commenced allotments based upon "men's estates and abilities to improve their lands"-- conditions imposed by the General Court. "Estate" was a term frequently employed to signify a community's composite estimate of an inhabitant's resources, social position, etc. The result was variously arrived at, but the significance and intent are clear. Recognition of a settler's "estate" served as recognition both of the social precedence inbred among the colonists and of the desirability of giving the utmost opportunity for a man of means to aid in the development of a township--and such opportunity could be given only, or could best be given, by land grants. The conjoined requirement to weigh the respective abilities of men to improve their lands is self-explanatory. The consideration was one of prime importance in pioneer days. Disregard of it was responsible for the failure of numerous early attempts at colonization. Every original Sudbury settler received a share in each land division but the size of the shares on the "estate" basis varied greatly. The first lands thus allotted were of "meadow," and these meadow divisions were taken as a measure for future divisions of the "common land" of the original grant, and for the use of "common land" until divided. They served also as a basis for taxation, the rates being levied in the same proportion.

William's allotments in the first three estate distributions of meadow were 4 1/2, 11 and 7 3/4 acres, a total of 23 1/2 acres. Several of the founders received considerably more, the maximum being 75 acres. A larger number received less than William did. Several were given similar allowances. At this point one may question the assumption that William Ward settled on the Sudbury tract in 1638, for his name does not appear on the old separate list of the first and second estate meadow divisions. The early records are too incomplete to permit deductive certainly from omissions, but they warrant the conjecture that he may have joined the settlement in 1639 or 1640, purchasing rights earlier granted. He appears on a record of "third additions", November 18, 1640. Apparently he was not one of the few (comparatively) well to do among the Sudbury founders. It has already been noted that the meadow divisions "by men's estates" gave a number of settler?s land, considerably in excess of his allotment. In the table of the "third additions" of 1640, twenty-two of the forty-nine inhabitants named were given substantially more than William, some of them very much more, and only five received appreciably less. His worldly possessions were evidently not such as to accord him special preference. But he was just as evidently a man whose character and personality impressed the community, or he would not appear as one of the six chosen to represent it in the meeting house contract. The five others were all "freemen", and three of them were of those of especially high rating by "estates".

William was the only one of the six neither well to do nor a freeman. His house-lot has been given as 20 acres, much larger than the average, but that tract included "a second addition, which he bought of Edmund Rice". On May 10, 1643, William became a "freeman" and thus secured the right of full suffrage and eligibility to all political positions. The following spring, he was selected the township deputy, or representative, to the General Court. The term in which he took part was the first in which the Deputies and Assistants (or Magistrates) had sat as separate bodies, a result generally credited to the famous fight between a "rich man" and the "poor widow Sherman" over a stray sow. William's first legislative duty was on a committee appointed June 7 to examine a revision of the colonial laws submitted by ex-Governor Bellingham "and return their objections & thoughts thereof to this house in wrigh teinge." The next year (1645) he was, together with Peter Noyes and Walter Haynes, appointed a commissioner "to end small causes" in Sudbury. Which appointment was repeated in 1646, with William Pelham and Edmund Rice as associates. He also for several years as chairman of Sudbury's selectmen and represented his community on the grand jury of the county court at Charlestown and Cambridge.

His holdings, too, increased by division of the township land, by occasional purchase, and by "gratulation", i.e. by grants from the township for special services rendered. A particularly large dividend came at the division on 1651 of a new colony grant, two miles wide, the length of the western boundary of the township. This time every proprietor shared a like, 130 acres each, the locations being decided by lot. William's total holdings thus rose to between two and three hundred acres. The change of hemisphere had been well rewarded.

About 1650 John had married Hannah Jackson and had settled in Cambridge (that part now Newton). With his exception, all the members of the family set their thoughts on the virgin lands of the province, and William with various other representative men of Sudbury took many a prospecting trip to view the country. The General Court granted the men their petition for the new community and they were given a proportion of land six miles square. Three men were recognized by their estate standing as the most prominent in the new community. Each was accorded a fifty-acre house-lot. William was one of the three. Two of his sons also participated: Obadiah, then twenty-five years of age, received a house-lot of twenty-one acres, and Richard, twenty-two years old, a house-lot of eighteen acres. (The ages given are of 1657.)

The successful launching of the project with its opportunity for new homes had been quickly followed by two marriages in the Ward household. Hannah married Abraham How of Waterton in the early spring of 1657, and Deborah was united in the fall to John, son of Solomon Johnson, who had been the Ward's nearest neighbor in Sudbury until his removal to Watertown in 1652, following the sale of his house-lot and other near-by plots to William Ward. Abraham was accorded a twenty-five acre house-lot in Marlborough and John received thirty acres, the small difference probably constituting an allowance for a poor stretch of ground, or to encompass a spring, or for other reasons of location. Some of the Wards were early in Marlborough, William Ward himself moved there for good in the early spring of 1661.

The family constituted quite a colony in itself. There were father William "of Sudbury" and mother Elizabeth; their four big sons--Obadiah, twenty-nine years old, Richard, twenty-six, Samuel, nineteen, and Increase, sixteen; Elizabeth, a girl of eighteen, and Hopestill, of fourteen; and three children--William, twelve; (NOTE differences in ages compared to genealogy chart) Eleazer, eleven; and Bethiah, two. With them came one of the three married daughters, Deborah Johnson. Hannah How joined them soon after. The records are incomplete so we can not tell how many children the married daughters brought with them, but Hannah had three at all events. Only John and Joanna were missing. Joanna had married Abraham Williams and lived in Cambridge. One other defection came in the fall when Richard married Mary Moores of Sudbury and returned there, his Marlborough grant reverting to Samuel. The loss was balanced later by Joanna and her husband and a child or two joining the plantation. Richard's marriage was followed in a few months by the marriage of Elizabeth to John Howe Jr., son of John Howe--the latter, like William, being one of the founders of both Sudbury and Marlborough. The total number of residents, including children, was about a hundred.

William's big house-lot was excellently situated. Its northeast corner faced the settlement's first meeting-house, soon after erected, and the town's main road was laid out to run along its northern boundary. Opposite, across the main road, west of the meeting house, was the minister's plot. The meeting house was built just within the southerly end of the Indian planting-field, before title to its site had been secured. The purchase of the site was from an Indian by the name of Anamaks who provided only a bare ten feet of ground around the building. William deeded to the town about half an acre of that part of his house-lot directly opposite. The town "gratefully accepted" and ordered; "first, the said William Ward shall have liberty to cut & carry away all the wood & timber that is upon ye same. Secondly, that he shall be satisfied to his content in any other part of the Town (not yet granted) in lieu thereof. And thirdly, it is ordered that this piece of land now by him surrendered into the Towns hands as before said shall lie for a perpetual common or Highway not to be taken up by any, or otherwise disposed of, without the consent of every Proprietor that hath Town Rights". This plot is part of the present High School Common. The house that William built was near the end of the present Hayden Street, a few steps from the library, where the home of Mr. John E. Hayes now stands. Its site was selected because of an abundant spring near by. A much more commodious dwelling it was than the first log cabin in Sudbury. Similar rough-hewn logs formed its frame, but it was shingle-roofed, clapboard outside, and boarded within, contained several rooms, and had a cellar.

As would be expected, William was prominent in Marlborough affairs. He was continuously a selectman, and a deacon of the church from the time of its organization. His house was frequently chosen for the midweek meetings, which became a feature of the township's religious life. The deacons constituted a general committee for the management of church affairs and to assist the minister in his duties, one of them taking his place when he was ill or absent. During divine service they sat in a special pew near the pulpit. Ward probably held other township offices, but the records from 1665 to 1739 disappeared many years ago. He was also frequently selected to represent Marlborough on the county grand jury, and in 1666 was again in Boston as a deputy.

Controversies had developed involving titles and divisions. The Wards and their friends constituted the party in power, but the opposing clique were numerous and bitterly dissatisfied, declaring themselves a majority both of residents and of proprietors, and in "gravity" able to "balance or overbalance" their opponents. Some of them, believing in "direct action," seized the Town Book--not, as they afterwards explained, to destroy it, but only "to rectify what was amiss" in it. They were also charged with but denied any intention or desire to "root out" Pastor Brimsmead. The Ward party appealed to the General Court, requesting it to appoint another committee with power to weigh and adjust the community's troubles. They said these troubles had come "partly through out own corruption?s and by ye temptations of Satan hindering our succeeding in matters both civil and ecclesiastical, which have been and is very uncomfortable to us and our friends". The fifteen signatories included William, his sons Obadiah and Samuel, and his sons-in-law Abraham Williams, John Johnson, and Abraham How. The opposing party remonstrated against the appointment of a committee and the implied interference of the legislature in the town's management of its affairs. The General Court appointed a committee, nevertheless. But no peace resulted.

Mutual complaints and recriminations filled year after year until a temporary suspension was enforced by the breaking out of the Indian war known as "King Philip's". Preparing for war with the Indians, a blockhouse was built but only a handful of resident "soldiers" were provided. As a result the inhabitants of Marlborough decided to maintain seven or eight "garrison houses".... Dwellings selected for their central or more easily defensible positions.... as shelter for attack. The protection of each garrison-house in case of assault was assigned to design aid residents, reinforced by a few of the colony soldiers. William Ward's, Abraham William's (Joanna's), and John Johnson's (Deborah's), were chosen as three of the garrison-houses. It will be noted that Samuel Ward and Abraham How (Hannah's husband) were assigned to Deacon William Ward?s, and Increase Ward to Thomas Rice's. William Ward Jr. lived with his parents and therefore was another of the defenders of Deacon Ward's. He was now the only unmarried son and shared with his father in the development of the latter's property instead of taking up land on his own account. John How, Jr. (Elizabeth's husband) was probably one of the nine townsmen assigned to the home of John Johnson. Obadiah Ward may have been also of the nine, or he may have been with Deacon Ward. Eleazer Ward was probably in Sudbury. He had during the previous spring married Hannah Rice to that township and had taken up his residence there. He may, however, have been with Deacon Ward, just as local tradition has it. Of the women of the family: Joanna and Deborah were in their own fortified homes; Hannah was, in time of alarm, with her husband in Deacon Ward's--as were also Sarah (Samuel's wife) and the two unmarried girls, Hopestill and Bethiah; Elizabeth and Mary (Obadiah's wife) were either in John Johnson's or Deacon Ward's; and Record (Increase's wife) was with him in Thomas Rice's. (Samuel and Obadiah had both married in 1667, and Increase in 1672.)

On Sunday, March 26, while they were assembled in the meeting house, came the alarm, "the Indians are upon us." Picture the excited fright of the children, the stumbling haste of the old and feeble. Heartening them, and hastening them to safety in the nearest garrison-houses, are the men and the more confident of the women. The men gripping their muskets, ready for any emergency, and shouting orders and adjurations. All gained shelter many in Deacon Ward's close by, but not a minute too soon. One man was crippled for life from a bullet that entered his elbow before he could reach the stockade. The Indians did not attack the garrison-houses, but they burnt the meeting-house, thirteen dwellings, and eleven barns, killed and mutilated may cattle, destroyed fences and orchards, and then retired to their camp in the neighboring woods. William Ward was one of the heaviest losers. The Indians then moved on to attack Sudbury and two of the Ward family lost their lives during those forty-eight hours. John Howe, husband of Elizabeth, was killed in the Sudbury fighting, and Eleazer (Deacon Ward 's youngest son) was shot down as he rode over a hill between Marlborough and Sudbury that has ever since been known as "Mount Ward".

In Marlborough, local disputes broke out again when the settlers returned to rebuild their homes, and the controversies were not ended until the report of another General Court committee in the fall of 1679. This found, among other things, that Deacon Edward Rice, the chief of the contestants fighting with Samuel Ward and Abraham How over some land in Assaba meadow, was "justly blamable for his turbulent opposing ye Order made by ye former Committee". The committee awarded the land between Abraham How, Edward and Samuel Rice, and the minister, but decreed also that "Recompense be made to ye above said Abraham How, & Samuel Ward to the full value of ye Meadow taken away from them by virtue of this order". Fifteen months later, in January of 1681, the two warring parties were united by matrimony--Deacon Rice becoming father-in-law to Bethiah Ward by his son Daniel's marriage to her.

The plans for this marriage resulted in a revolutionary change in William's home and home life. Hopestill from the beginning and Bethiah as she became old enough had helped their mother keep house after the family removal to Marlborough. (Elizabeth, the fourth daughter, three years older than Hopestill, had married within the first year in the new township.) The number grouped around the table had steadily lessened as Richard, Samuel, Obadiah, Increase, and Eleazer had taken wives and set up their own establishments. Of the thirteen children only Hopestill, William, and Bethiah were living on the family homestead when the year 1676 came around. Then, in April 1678 Hopestill married James Woods and set up her own household, and in August of the following year William Jr. renounced bachlorhood in order to marry the young widow (Hannah Brigham) Eames, leaving Bethiah as the only unmarried child. William Jr. brought his bride to Deacon Ward's house, but the arrival of their first-born, William of the third generation, had stimulated a desire for a separate home.

So, with Bethiah the last unmarried child about to wed, Deacon Ward and his wife, respectively seventy-eight and sixty-eight years of age, decided that they also would try housekeeping by themselves. An entirely new experience it was to be, for when Elizabeth became a bride her husband had been a widower with several children. Thus plans had gone ahead simultaneously for Bethiah's marriage and for setting up William Jr. in his own home. First, in recognition of the latter's many years of virtual partnership, Deacon Ward bestowed "an estate of lands and housing" upon him.

The estate comprised several tracts and the westerly half of the original house-lot together with its proportionate right on all future land divisions. With the half of the house-lot went the new barn standing on it and the westerly half of the Ward house itself, with the right accorded to William Jr. to sever it from the easterly half and move in onto his own property. This was done, and William Jr. and his wife and baby thenceforth conducted a separate establishment. And for the next four or five years Deacon Ward and his wife lived by themselves, in the house thus forcibly reduced in size, the quiet restful life of an elderly couple of comfortable means whose children are all married and well provided for.

William Ward began to feel the weight of his years. He entered into a contract with his son Samuel to assume the management of his herd, his lands. And to furnish him and his wife with all the household supplies and fuel that they should need for the remainder of their lives. His reward was the succession to the William Ward home and the land it stood on, the remaining half of the original house-lot, and various other tracts."

The sturdy old Englishman, "William Ward" of Sudbury? passed away and was laid to rest in Spring Hill Cemetery, to be loved and reverenced by succeeding generations as the patriarch of the family. For nearly half a century he had lived and labored in the New World of his adoption, playing an important role in the founding of two successful townships. Seeing thirteen children develop to ripe manhood and womanhood; and for him achieving the age of eighty-four years. He had made his last will a few months earlier "enjoying the entireness of my understanding, but by reason of my great age, and the infirmities thereof being sensible of my approaching death". He appointed his wife Elizabeth his executrix, and made her heir for life to all his cattle and other "moveable goods of every sort, both within doors and without." Whatever she did not use during her lifetime was to go in equal shares "unto all my children, those, which I have by her, and those which I have by my former wife." He divided his real estate among his sons Samuel, John, and Increase, and his grandson William (son of Obadiah). Samuel was conditionally, the chief beneficiary, in virtue of the agreement to care for Elizabeth Ward for the remainder of her life. William Jr. received no land, his share having been already deeded to him, as noted earlier. He gave small money bequests to all his children and to the widows and children of his two deceased sons Richard and Eleazer. His sons John and Increase and his son-in-law Abraham Williams were named "overseers' of the will, "to be helpful unto my wife, as occasion shall serve". His worthy helpmate--who had in her wifely, motherly sphere participated to the full in his struggles and successes--survived him by thirteen years and then joined him on Spring Hill: "Here lies the body of Elizabeth Ward, the servant of the Lord, deceased in the 87th year of her age, December the 9th, in the year of our Lord, 1700."
Change Date: 15 Feb 2002 at 15:17:14

Father: Johannes (Edward) WARDE b: 19 Mar 1560 in Braunston,,Rutland,England
Mother: Maria HATTON b: ABT