lafferty1945

@Book{ lafferty1945,
    author = {Maude Ward Lafferty},
    title = {Life and Times of Andrew Harrison Ward},
    address = {N.p.},
    publisher = {Maude Ward Lafferty},
    year = 1945,
}

Self-published book by Kentucky local historian and genealogist Maude Ward Lafferty, a niece of Zebulon Ward and daughter of Andrew Harrison Ward.¹

p. 4: Gives date of Ward’s parents’ marriage as September 27, 1803, in Cynthiana, Harrison County, Kentucky. Says that Andrew Ward’s father Zebulon Headington “came by boat to Louisville, Kentucky, about 1785,” and was “one of the first lot holders of Louisville in 1779.”² But he “settled in Harrison County on the waters of Indian Creek.”

p. 4:

The ancestors of Andrew Ward came from Ulster, Ireland, to Virginia, in 1727 and lived in Augusta County, Botetourt County and Greenbriar County, Virginia, before coming to Kentucky at the close of the Revolutionary War. They came down the Ohio River in a flatboat to Limestone, Mason County, Kentucky, with other Ward relatives and settled ‘on the waters of Clear Creek, headwaters of Jessamine Creek, near where it empties into the Kentucky river.’ Andrew moved to Harrison County in 1800.

p. 5:

Soon after their marriage, the newly-weds sold their land on the waters of Clear Creek and went with Colonel William Ward of Mason County, who was a cousin of Andrew’s father, to settle his Mad River lands in Ohio. Together, Colonel William Ward and Andrew Ward laid out the city of Urbana, Ohio, in 1805, which Colonel Ward said he named for the word ‘urbanity.’ This is told in Howe’s ‘Ohio Collections’ and other records.³ He gave Andrew and Elizabeth a quarter section of his extensive holdings and six acres within the city, together with other perquisites, on condition that Andrew teach his son Charles the tanner’s trade.

According to Lafferty, Andrew Ward and Elizabeth Headington remained in Urbana until James Washington Ward, their oldest child, was abducted by Indians. They returned to Harrison County where “Zebulon Headington built a home for his daughter on a part of his land” (p. 6).

p. 6: Andrew Ward enlisted at Cynthiana to fight in the War of 1812, according to a veteran’s file (25-915) cited by Lafferty, and was discharged in 1819. He later received a pension beginning in 1830.⁴

p. 7: During the war, Elizabeth Headington Ward moved in with her children into Zebulon Headington’s house. Andrew Harrison Ward was born there in 1815.

p. 8: Zebulon Headington was a Revolutionary War veteran, according to memories of Andrew Harrison Ward: “Zebulon Headington had enslited in the Revolutionary War from Culpepper County, Virginia, and served in the Quartermaster’s Department. He was on his way to Yorktown with supplies, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered and was near enough to hear the booming of the cannon.”

p. 9: Andrew Harrison Ward remembered an enslaved woman on his grandfather’s place named “Big Kate, of whom he was afraid.” (I know there is a Kate listed in Zebulon Headington’s will inventory. See Harrison County Will Book D, p. 465-468, KDLA.)

p. 9: Birthday of Zebulon Ward recorded in Ward family Bible: “born January 14, 1822,” the ninth of ten children

p. 10: Gives names of Zebulon Ward descendants: “His eldest son, William Ward, married Nellie, daughter of Judge Clark of Little Rock, and had two children, a daughter Mary and a son. His eldest daughter, Addie Ward, married, first Ashley Fatherly, and had two children, Worthen and Ward Fatherly; she then married Dr. Green, a prominent physician of Little Rock and had one son, Billy Green. His daughter, Minnie Ward, who was caleld ‘the Southern Queen’ at Mardi Gras, married Mr. Crampton, then Oscar Davis, a prominent banker of Little Rock. They moved to Arizona and left two daughters, whose names I do not remember. His daughter, Nettie Ward, married Mr. Fenno and Mr. Farquhar, and had a daughter, whose name I believe, was Minette. His youngest son, Zeb Ward, Jr., married Mamie Sibley of Chicago and had Zilla Ward and Zeb Ward III.”

p. 11: Lafferty says she has “bundles of letters, (perhaps I should say epistles) from these brothers and sisters, some of which were written a century ago.”

p. 15: Lafferty traces paternal line back to James Ward (b. 1672) who came to Philadelphia from Ulster, Ireland before 1730.

p. 16: Contains to citations to a variety of sources on the James Ward descendants, including his great-grandsom “Colonel William Ward of Urbana.”

p. 29: “Among my father’s papers, I found, in his handwriting, this statement: ’At the close of the Revolutionary War, my father came, with his father and grandfather and other Ward relatives, to Maysville by flatboat. Some of the family settled there, but his family settled on the waters of Clear Creek in Jessamine County.” She mentions finding Colonel William Ward and his brother and sons in Robertson’s Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky.

p. 75: In the middle of his legal education at Transylvania University, Andrew Harrison Ward “accepted a position as clerk on the Tombigbee River in 1837 and was so pleased [p. 76] with the work he took a better place as purser on the Mississippi River. There must have been a strange fascination about it for his Sister Ellen wrote, at that time, ‘Brother Harry and Brother Zeb are both on The River now, and happy, of course.’”

p. 76: “Uncle Zeb remained ‘on the River’ much longer than Father did.” AHW returned to finish his legal education and was admitted to the bar in 1844.

p. 80: Quotes an anti-radical Reconstruction speech by Andrew Harrison Ward, in response to Thaddeus Stevens’s “Perfect Republic” speech

p. 81: “Uncle Zeb told me …” relates anecdote Ward told the author about AHW’s wife

p. 85: A few paragraphs abou “Uncle Zeb’s” Civil War service:

He owned a bluegrass farm in the edge of Versailles and was a member of the legislature from Woodford County. When an effort was made to have Kentucky secede from the Union along with other southern states, it was Uncle Zeb and Joshua Speed, a brother of Lincoln’s Attorney General, James Speed, who led the anti-secessionist contingent in the legislature and kept Kentucky in the Union.

When Uncle Zeb’s friend, General J. S. Jackson, raised a regiment of Federal cavalry, Uncle Zeb furnished the horses. He served as aid-de-camp on General Nelson’s staff until Nelson was killed, then enlisted on General Jackson’s staff, serving until Jackson’s death. Then he became Government Purchasing Agent. While a Union man in every sense of the word, having been an old time Whig, he became a Democrat.

p. 126: Has a box of letters from AHW, including “one from Little Rock where he was visiting Uncle Zeb. In it he describes Aunt Mary’s [Mary Worthen Ward] new conservatory, just off her bedroom and her wonderful roses, ‘Nearly a hundred varieties.’ But he deplores her lawn which she strives to cover with Kentucky Bluegrass; he says, ‘It is as sparse as the beard on a young man’s face, scorning thick settlement.’”