Santa Clara County
Biographies
WILLIAM EMERSON WARD
Few of the early settlers of San Jose have led lives of such singular usefulness and nobility as William Emerson Ward, since 1871 the owner and occupant of a five-acre ranch on Minnesota avenue in the Willow district, and from earliest manhood an indefatigable worker along benevolent and humanitarian lines. At the present time he is devoting practically all of his time to missionary work, more especially to the Florence Crittenton mission, of which he has been a trustee and the secretary since its organization. No less energetic and telling have been his efforts in connection with the Sunshine mission, with headquarters at No. 930 Harrison street, San Francisco, and which unquestionably has proved one of the greatest factors for good on the Pacific coast. Mr. Ward is a member of the Society of Friends, and to this beautiful and time-honored organization owes the inspiration and training which finds vent in his present zeal for mankind’s immortal welfare.
A native of Washington county, Me., Mr. Ward was born July 18, 1835, and is a son of William Ward, who was born in New Brunswick, September 13, 1797. The paternal grandfather served in the war of the Revolution, presumably on the side of the British. About 1858 William Ward located on a farm near Minneapolis, Minn., where he engaged in farming up to the time of his death, May 11, 1876. For three years he was survived by his wife, formerly Sarah McNeil, who died May 28, 1879, and who was born in Edinburg, Scotland, June 12, 1795. There were ten children of this union, seven sons and three daughters, of whom William Emerson is the ninth. He was educated in the public schools of Maine, supplemented by an academic education, and in 1851 he began to learn the carpenter’s trade under his brother, Norman M. With this practical equipment he accompanied his brother to Minnesota in 1854, and there became prominent in building circles, erecting many of the most substantial business and other buildings of the then small town, including three of the city’s school structures. As heretofore stated he came to California in 1871, and has since placed his small ranch under a high state of cultivation, making of it one of the most valuable and paying properties in the neighborhood. Making a specialty of prunes and apricots, he equipped his ranch with a dryer in 1876, and has since operated it with practical results. His fruit is sent all over the western states, under the name of the Mount Hamilton brand.
While living in Minneapolis, Mr. Ward was united in marriage with Evelyn J. Conney, a native of New Hampshire, to whom has been born two sons, Forest S., manager of the commissary department of the City and County Hospital of San Francisco; and James William a well known surgeon of San Francisco, who has a sanitarium of his own. Mr. Ward is a Prohibitionist in politics, and in 1883 served on the board of supervisors of Santa Clara county. In his missionary work he is fortunate in having the hearty cooperation of his gifted wife, who is active in mission and church work, and is a director and the treasurer of the Foreign Missionary Society. Mr. Ward is beloved for his disinterested and beautiful life, for the supreme forgetfulness of self which has never permitted the aggregation of wealth, or the neglect of any opportunity to benefit such of his fellow creatures as have composed his environment.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Page 1376. The Chapman Publishing
Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2016 Joyce Rugeroni.