It is probably best to load it, then go off line to read it. Or, perhaps, save it to file as it is almost sixty pages long. The illustrations are now scanned and included too. You can access them from the index below.
I found the reading of this book quite interesting many years ago, before I even thought of getting into genealogy as a hobby. Of equal interest is "The Seelys of New Brunswick" by Harold N. Fanjoy and C. G. "Hap" Ward published in 1992. It presents the United Empire Loyalists account of the American Revolution among the biographies of various family members.
Both the Ward and Seely families emigrated to North America in the 1600's from England. Both families have intermarriages, and large branches in Canada and the United States.
Nehemiah Ward b 7 Nov 1740 in Attleboro, Bristol, MA married in Sackville, New Brunswick (then Nova Scotia) 13 Feb 1765 and died there in May 1827. He also had land there in 1662. Nehemiah was a fourth great grandfather of "Hap" Ward and a third great grandson of the William Ward born in England about 1603. None of his descendants appear in "The William Ward Genealogy" and he is only mentioned briefly in a footnote of his father.
Of course, in the "Canadian" book it is the stories of the United Empire Loyalists that are featured.
Fortunately my grandfather, Horace Clark (son of Carrie Janette Ward), harnessed his oxen and left a homestead in North Dakota for one in Saskatchewan in much friendlier times in 1905. None of his immediate family were tarred and feathered, or worse, and his children are also included in "The William Ward Genealogy".
May our relationship continue to be as friendly.
Robert Kline Apr 2000
THE HISTORY OF
THE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM WARD
OF SUDBURY, MASS., 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
ARTEMAS WARD
PART ONE
CHAPTER ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................PAGE
I THE SEARCH FOR THE ENGLISH HOME OF "WILLIAM WARD OF SUDBURY"....................................................................................... 3
II THE ENGLAND AND THE NORTH AMERICA OF THE YOUTH OF WILLIAM WARD. HIS EMIGRATION............................................ 5
III THE VOYAGE.................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14
IV THE FIRST WEEK IN THE NEW WORLD..................................................................................................................................................... 20
V FOUNDING SUDBURY, MASS....................................................................................................................................................................... 24
VI PIONEER LIFE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS ................................................................................................................................................ 27
VII POLICIES AND SUFFRAGE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS.......................................................................................................................... 35
VIII FOUNDING A SECOND TOWNSHIP.......................................................................................................................................................... 40
IX KING PHILIPS WAR ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 49
X AFTER KING PHILIP'S WAR TO THE DEATH OF WILLIAM WARD ......................................................................................................... 54
v
THESE ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON LINE
The General Artemus Ward School, Shrewsbury, Mass.
The London of the time of William Ward's emigration
The type of ship which carried William Ward and his family across the ocean
The "house-lots" of the founders of Sudbury, Mass., placed upon a modern map of Wayland, Mass.
The contract for the construction of Sudbury's first Meeting-house --William Ward one of the signers
Along the "Old Indian Trail," only a few minutes walk from the site of the house-lot of William Ward, his home from 1638 to 1661
A modern map of the center of Marlborough, Mass., showing the site of the dwelling erected by William ward in 1660
Marlborough's preparations during King Philip's War
Mount Ward, between Marlborough and Sudbury, Mass.
The Pioneer Memorial Pier, on the Boston - New York route through Marlborough, Mass.
The southerly view of the Pioneer Memorial Pier
The William Ward - Elizabeth Ward monument in Spring Hill Cemetery
General Artemus Ward, the first Commander-in-Chief of the American Revolution
The granite marker of the Artemas Ward House, Shrewsbury, Mass., on the Boston - Worcester highway
vii
The Artemas Ward Annex to the Howe Memorial Library, Shrewsbury, Mass.
The General Ward tablet in the main vestibule of the Congregational Church, Shrewsbury, Mass.
The Ward tablet in the wall of the New England Historic Genealogy Society building, Boston
Artemas Ward, a noted lawyer and judge, son of General Artemas Ward
Andrew H. Ward, Compiler of the "Ward Family," published in 1851
Nahum Ward, an early settler of Marietta, O., and one of its largest land operators
James Otis Ward, a prominent ship - owner, founder of the shipping business from which developed the "Ward Line" and the "Cuban Mail S. S. Line"
William Hayes Ward, many years editor of "The Independent" and a distinguished Assyriologist
Artemas Ward, publisher of this Genealogy
Joseph Ward, one of the founders of the State of South Dakota; the founder and first president of Yankton College, Yankton, S. D.
viii
I, ARTEMAS WARD ( Number 2722 of the original
genealogy) see in this fourteenth day of March, 1925, a
day of many various Thanksgivings.
I feel sure that everyone included in its pages
will be thankful that it has appeared, and that it
delivers into their hands the names and histories of all
the known members of our Ward family.
I thank in memory, Andrew H. Ward, who in 1851
issued the "Ward Family" and gave me the opportunity to
publish this later compilation.
I cheerfully and reverently thank Almighty God that
He has spared my life to fulfill in my seventy-seventh
year the ambition which started in my tenth year, and I
thank Him for having so prospered me that I was able to
complete the work, which has been both costly and
difficult.
I thank Charles Martyn, compiler and editor of the
genealogy, and I congratulate him on the very successful
and wholly satisfactory result of his labors. His
accuracy, fidelity, and industry know no limits, and I
believe that he will secure greater reward than this
commendation of mine in the place that this volume will
give him among genealogists.
I thank Philip Leroy Shaw, Mr. Martyn's chief
assistant, for his tireless and unstinting devotion to
the work--the long hours he gave to it and his
conscientious struggle for the nearest possible approach
to perfection of genealogical detail. I do not doubt that
the ability and energy that he possesses will carry him
forward to important positions.
Finally, to each and all of my active office force I
extend my sincere thanks for any assistance that they may
have contributed to the undertaking, the consummation of
which has made me extremely happy.
(Artemas Ward's signature)
The covers of this book enclose the tribal story of an Englishman named
William Ward who established his family here in the first generation of the
settlement of North America. It's pages carry the account of his descendants
down to he present day.
Much of the history of our country is told in the life stories of " William
Ward of Sudbury" and his descendants.
The first several chapters portray the labors and dangers of the pioneers
of old Massachusetts. The biographies of the succeeding genealogical division
supplement their story and disclose various cross sections of the struggle for
independence. They tell also of members of the family participating in the
opening of the great Western country, and in the death struggle of the recent
World War.
The family has shown a healthy growth since the publication of Andrew H.
Ward's "Ward Family" in 1851. That volume recorded 4027 descendants. This new
Genealogy(in 1925) gives a record of 10,746.
(NOTE: IN AUG 1999 WE HAVE 13,205 DESCENDANTS WITH MANY
LINES STILL NOT FOLLOWED, BUT ONE ESPECIALLY LONG ONE ADDED.
THAT OF THE ANCESTORS OF ROBERT NELSON WARD OF NEW
BRUNSWICK, BACK TO THE MID 1700's. IF LIVING PEOPLE HAD BEEN
INCLUDED, AS THEY WERE IN THE ORIGINAL, THE NUMBER WOULD BE
MUCH HIGHER).
All totals would be considerably larger if it had been possible to list all
descendants. Some are inevitably missing, for it happens many times that
families move away, leaving only faint traces that are speedily obliterated.
These 10,746 descendants include 396 graduates from 149 universities,
colleges, and normal schools (fifty-six of them from Harvard College and
University); fifty-nine representatives and senators in colony, state, and
national legislatures; twenty-two judges; army and navy officers in every
conflict in which the United States and its predecessor-colonies have been
engaged; and a substantial and creditable showing in practically every other
calling comprised within modern civilization.
Most numerous in its pages are farmer--as befits a family which set its
first American roots in the wild lands of Old Massachusetts and relied upon its
crops and its cattle to make its way in the New World, rather than by trade or
in other manners. The Ward farmer of today cover every part of the continent--
raising sheep in Canada, oranges in Florida, and wheat and corn and cattle in he
Central West, and specializing in various other products in various other
sections.
xi
Next in numerical importance are school teachers
(both men and women) and ministers of the Gospel--facts
worthy of a sturdy pride and a good text for anyone who
wishes to reflect upon the part that members of the
family have played in welding the nation's children and
youths into the citizenry upon which rest all the
privileges and institutions which we have slowly and
painfully acquired and erected.
Well represented also are the other professions--
doctors and lawyers and engineers being the most
prominent in the order given. The world of business has
given success to number, and every branch of trade and
mechanical art has its exponents. There are writers and
architects, salesmen and accountants and railroad men,
singer and nurses, and so in great variety. Prominent
among living members is Charles Artemas Ward (4420d in
the original), an admiral of the Chilean Navy, and at the
moment that this volume goes to press a member of the
triumvirate constituting the provisional government of
Chile, which has ousted the reactionary revolutionary
junta and is arranging for the return of Chile's legally
elected president, Arturo Alessandri.
The volume should be an inspiration to very
descendant. Let him, or her, note how will the family has
borne its share in the development of the continent and
with what diversity it has taken its part in the
activities of a great nation, and then determine to do
his or her utmost to "carry on" with equal strength and
honor.
ARTEMAS WARD
xii
This genealogy of the family of William Ward who
settled in Sudbury, MA, in or about the year 1838 records
all his known descendants along male lines and three
generations along female lines of marriage into other
families.
The first two generations along female lines married
into other families are treated in full. Of the third--
i.e., the grandchildren of Ward daughters--only the names
are given. To have continued the female lines further
would not only have been to step far outside the name
"Ward"-- it would also have duplicated entire sections of
the genealogies of other names.
There are errors of course. Also there are
omissions. Some of the latter are unavoidable. Others
might have been supplied if publication had been delayed
for a still more through search of records and
depositories--but id one were to postpone the printing of
a book of this kind until every available possibility had
been exhausted, the book would never appear.
I have avoided the conventional method of padding
the first pages with undigested, and largely
indigestible, material in the form of verbatim wills and
other documents, disconnected extracts from public and
private record, etc. Instead, I have told in narrative
form the life of William Ward and his family in the New
Word, maintaining equal accuracy and embodying much more
information.
I have not appended to each individual his or her
ancestry by generations, as frequently in modern
genealogies. Both ancestry and descendant can so readily
be traced that neither the extra space entailed or the
monotony of persistent reiteration seemed to be
justified.
Nor have I wasted space in comment on, or the
discussion of, debatable points of minor importance, such
prolixity being of more interest to genealogists than of
value to descendants.
On the other hand, for the sake of clearness, many
additional pages have been consumed by practically
avoiding abbreviations and by the free repetition of the
names of birthplaces, etc., instead of attempting to
evade such repetition.
xiii
Except only the grandchildren of female wards, I
have given each descendant a serial number instead of
numbering only those who are continued to separate
headings. This aids identification and the noting of
relationship, and also has the advantage of showing the
holder's approximate position among the descendants of
William Ward of Sudbury.
The aim has been to ;make a volume that will be at
once accurate as a genealogical record and of interesting
and comfortable reading as family history.
Prior to this final compilation, work had several
times been started on the genealogical portion of the
volume. Credit is due for additions made at those earlier
dates by the late Paul Theodore Bliss Ward (Number 3077
of the original Genealogy), The Reverend George K. Ward
(a genealogist but not a descendant of William Ward of
Sudbury), and the late William H. Blanchard of
Montpelier, Vt.
During the last several months of editorial
preparation I have been ably assisted by Mr. Philip Leroy
Shaw.
The task of abstracting the Wards and their
immediate connections from the printed Massachusetts
vital record was performed by Paul Theodore Bliss Ward.
He added also the story of Elizabeth, the eighth (known)
child of William Ward, of whom no record, save her birth
date, appeared in the "Ward Family," 1851.
The production of the work has been an undertaking
of considerable magnitude, yet it is only ;one of
numerous related enterprises carried through by its
publisher, Mr. Artemas Ward of the Seventh Generation.
Prior to him, nothing had been done in memory of
Ward ancestors excepting the mentioned publication of the
"Ward Family" in 1851 and the erection of a family
monument in the Shrewsbury Cemetery.
The burial-stone of Elizabeth, the first Ward mother
in the New world, lay for generations forgotten and
neglected in a disused, uncared-for cemetery of
Marlborough, Mass. The name of her most distinguished
descendant, General Artemas Ward--despite the high
tribute paid to him by John Adams as a man "universally
esteemed, beloved and confided in by his army and their
Country"-- was permitted to slip almost into oblivion
without any attempt to give him the place rightfully his
due. Other landmarks and heirlooms, and other descendants
of worth and prominence, were unknown to a majority of
the family as of kin to them.
From his boyhood onward Mr. Ward had felt a strong
impulse to
xiv
rectify these conditions, and an earnest desire that the
family should "find itself"--that the honors and
distinctions earned by its members should be the common
possession of all instead of being known to only a few.
The dreams of youth are not readily attained. As Mr.
Ward mounted toward success and distinction n the
business world he found a multitude of claims upon his
attention repeatedly frustrating attempts to make his
dreams become realities, Time always pressed and the
right kind of assistance was not always available.
Up to this point the story is a common one, many
times repeated-- plans long envisioned and long hoped
for, too often to be finally pushed aside and dropped,
immersed by conflicting circumstances.
This story differs in the fact that Mr. Ward never
relinquished his dream. In 1918 came the first
substantial result--the erection of the General Ward
Memorial Entrance to the Shrewsbury Cemetery. Next
followed, in 1921, the publication of "The Life of
Artemas Ward, the first Commander-in-Chief of the
American Revolution," a volume which represented a labor
of five full years, during all of which period the heavy
expenses of research were borne by Mr. Ward. The
reception accorded the volume by reviewers, historians,
and teachers justified his long-held belief in the
greater recognition due General Ward. The work has found
its way into every library of importance, and every
university and college throughout the United States.
Succeeding these two steps came many others.
He bound into five large morocco-covered volumes the
manuscripts on the time of General Ward and his father,
Colonel Nahum Ward, that had come down with the Artemas
Ward House, and presented them to the Massachusetts
Historical Society, Boston, to be cared for in perpetuity
in its fireproof vaults and alcoves and to he held in
trust as a valuable original-source for students and
historians.
In the preparation of these big volumes, 19.5 by 13
inches in height and width, each of the more than 1000
manuscripts was covered on both sides with invisible
gauze for its preservation.
Also in Boston, he placed portraits of General Ward
in the Old and New State Houses and a memorial tablet in
the home of the New England Historic Genealogical
Society.
In Marlborough he built the Pioneer Memorial Pier at
the entrance to Spring Hill Cemetery; embedded Elizabeth
Ward's headstone in a granite monument; and set all the
other Ward gravestones in that cemetery in separate
concrete slabs. In addition, he placed a new fence around
the cemetery. As
xv
recent Marlborough administrations also have displayed a
laudable interest in the upkeep of the town's early
burial-grounds and have made regular appropriations for
their care, Old Spring Hill is now one of the most
attractive of ancient Massachusetts cemeteries--a strong
contrast to the weed and bramble overrun disgrace of a
few years ago.
In Shrewsbury Mr. Ward has kept the Artemas Ward
House in repair and has maintained it as a place of
historical interest accessible to visitors, with a bold
marker commanding the highway to Boston; and in January
of 1924 he presented to the town the Artemas Ward Annex,
a handsome stone and brick addition to the Howe Memorial
Library, dedicating it to the memory of the General. The
annex contains a Children's Room, a History Room, and a
modern stack-room capable of housing from twenty to
thirty thousand books. Further, he has set a tablet to
Artemas Ward in the Shrewsbury Congregational Church --
the General had been one of the residents to help raise
its frame when it was erected, a "new meeting-house," in
1766. And in the courthouse of Worcester, Mass., he has
placed a third portrait of the General.
The Marlborough memorial pier and monument, the
Artemas Ward Annex, the Shrewsbury Church tablet, and the
New England Historic Genealogical Society tablet, are
illustrated in this volume. The Memorial Entrance to the
Shrewsbury Cemetery and the Artemas House are depicted in
"The Life of (General) Artemas Ward."
The accumulative result of these projects has been
very marked. They have gone far towards establishing for
the Ward family the recognition to which it is entitled
for the contributions its members have made to the
upbuilding of the country. Recent references to General
Ward have shown him the considerations that was formally
lacking. His home town of Shrewsbury has given the title
of "The General Artemas Ward School" to one of her
largest public schools. And Marlborough has bestowed the
name of "The Artemas Ward Playground" on the twenty-acre
recreation center she is building.
Conjoined with these special plans of Mr. Ward was
for a number of years the collection of Americana,
printed and manuscript, specializing in Eastern
Massachusetts and the early days of the Revolution. The
books and pamphlets thus acquired, more than 1500 titles,
he recently presented to the Shrewsbury library.
He is a Tercentenary member of the New England
Historic Genealogical Society; Life member of the
Bostonian Society; Life member of the Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities; Life member of
xvi
the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; Life
member f the New England Society of New York; and a
member for many years of the City Club, Aldine
Association, and Church Club, New York City. He was one
of the founders of the Sphinx Club, New York City.
Much, or all, of the foregoing and of the
biographical material given in his numerical position in
this volume is of common or readily ascertainable
information concerning Mr. Ward. The full measure of his
personality can be appreciated only by those who have
been in long contact with him in his daily life and
activities. Such has been my privilege. The compilation
of this volume; the preparation of "The Life of (General)
Artemas Ward"; and the execution of other Ward projects,
have necessitated close association for a number of years
and under all conditions--in days of success-crowned
research and in periods of unprofitable investigation; in
fair weather and foul; in good health and poor; in times
of general prosperity and in periods when the county's
industries slackened. Through all such circumstances Mr.
Ward maintained the buoyant enthusiasm that is
characteristic of him, the same unswerving adherence to
his plans, and the same kindly courtesy for all those
engaged upon them.
That the bulk of the work on the Genealogy had been
done and the matter was passing to the printer's hands,
Mr. Ward fell dangerously ill. The doctors attributed his
breakdown in part to his too close application to the
preparation of the book, yet so strong was his interest
in it that even on his sick-bed he kept constantly in
touch with its production. Also while thus confined, he
consummated a plan long held in mind by which the Artemas
Ward House will become a public museum of colonial and
revolutionary life and a permanent memorial to the
General.
Such is the man who is responsible for the
production of this Genealogy and for all the other Ward
projects of this generation. Every descendant, and
particularly every owner of a copy of this work, will be
interested in this brief story and description. For
further concerning him ( he was Number 2722, page 362 in
the original).
CHARLES MARTYN
xvii
THE EMIGRATION OF WILLIAM WARD
AND HIS FAMILY AND THAT OF HIS
FAMILY IN THE NEW WORLD
The search for the English Home of " William Ward of Sudbury"
William Ward "of Sudbury", head of the line to which
this book is dedicated, 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.
From what part of England did he come? Who were his
ancestors? These questions must go unanswered as in the
case of many another of the country's founders.
Determined efforts have been made to obtain the
information. A few years ago I visited England and
directed inquiries to every parish possessing a register
that goes back to 1638. I followed clues in person and by
correspondence in three hundred and eighty-nine parishes-
- thirty-nine of England's forty counties being
represented. But to no avail!
Some of the clues were entirely without merit and
were speedily discarded. They included entries of the
names Deane, Elward, Everard, Harte, Warren, and Waite,
the old style writing having been misread and reported as
"Ward" or "Warde."
The true Ward entries embrace the baptisms of
several infants of the mane of William(or Gulielmus) Ward
of Warde of about the right date, but it was not found
possible to identify any one of them with "William Ward
of Sudbury". Most of them were eliminated by finding
their deaths recorded in England, or residence there
after our William Ward had emigrated to America, or
children of the wrong names, etc.
Three of them remain enigmas. There was disclosed no
information to tell their fate: how long or where they
lived, or when or where they died; whether they remained
in the parishes of their birth, or moved to other
parishes, or emigrated. These three frequently recur to
my imagination. Was one of them William Ward of Sudbury?
If so, which one?
3
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
Perhaps not any one of the three. The true entries
of William Ward himself, his wives, and his children, may
be patiently awaiting discovery in the register of a
parish whose incumbent did not heed my circular appeal to
consult his records, or who (quite pardonably) was unable
to recognize the entries in the weird penmanship puzzles
which the pages of may of the old registers present to
the uninitiated.
It is possible that they are not in any register.
English parish records are very far from complete. Some
of those early pastors were so lazy or so careless or so
obstinately defiant of civil decrees that they entirely
omitted the required entries of baptisms, marriages, and
deaths, leaving the pages blank for years at a stretch.
And, if made, the entries may have been in one of
the numerous registers which have been lost or destroyed.
The "bishops' transcripts" of the records are
similarly incomplete.
The search was continued through a long list of
wills in Somerset House, London, and elsewhere, and many
documents in the Public Record Office on the British
Museum.
There remains, of course, a great deal of material
in the two latter, and various other, depositories that
time did not permit me to inspect, and it is one of my
dreams that some day I may be permitted to delve deeper.
There were several finds that would have satisfied,
have even rejoiced, an easy-going family historian or the
uncritical genealogist so much in evidence a few years
ago. It would have been the most facile thing in the
world to have adopted one of the three possible William
Wards f the parish registers and thus have established
the much desired " English connection."
It would not even have been necessary to have
ransacked either the registers or the transcripts, nor to
have scanned innumerable wills. There was at hand in the
published "Visitations" a William Warde who fitted all
the "certainties" and "possibilities" of Andre H. Ward's
introduction to his "Ward Family," 1851. There was, it is
true, no confirmation--but neither was there any
contradiction--and the connection carried a fully
authenticated coat-of-arms!
All these "possibilities" have been set aside. This
volume makes no claims or assertions concerning the
English ancestry of "William Ward of Sudbury." All that
we know concerning his English life is contained within
the first paragraph of this chapter.
4
The England and the North America of the Youth of William
Ward.
His Emigration
The England which gave birth to William ward was a
notion developing into an empire, a nation which had
drunk of the pride of world place and achieved a new
measure of prosperity, A nation also in which unrest was
being Fired by many ferments, economic, political, and
religious.
It was a strange England which travailed--not easily
recognized today.
The sixteenth century had seen marked manufacturing
and commercial growth, but it was still essentially an
agricultural country, with half its grain grown in open
lands of common cultivation, dotted with manor-houses
(imposing and otherwise), and village groups of the
dwellings f small farmers (or yeomen), artisans, and
laborers. It was distinguished in parts by great flocks
of sheep which had encroached upon its arable land. The
dense forests of earlier generations had disappeared,
leaving only a moderate, an insufficient, acreage of
woodland.
The population was less than four million. London
was the only city of size. No other had grown beyond the
status of a country town.
The standard of education was high among a select
few but low among the people in general. Customs and
manners were coarse; conversation, and plays, and books
practiced bread freedom. The fastidious cleanliness of
later generations was unknown. Except among the stricter
Puritans, drunkenness was a national custom, and
immorality but a peccadillo. Superstition saturated all
classes and there was a general belief in and fear of
witches and witchcraft.
And ever in the background the gallows reaped its
early toll of victims. In these days in England (as
elsewhere in Europe) the government and judiciary
recklessly wasted the human resources of the nation,
blotting out the lives of its citizens for almost any
crime. The prohibited catching of a wild rabbit was ample
cause for a man to be hanged.
5
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
Withal, a people hardy and enterprising. And during
the recent decades of Elizabeth--a mighty queen, poor in
health but strong of brain and will--English "sea-dogs,"
backed by English "Merchant Adventurers," had been, as
never before, exploring and trading and fighting upon and
across the seas and oceans, seeking new routes, new
sources, and new outlets, elbowing their way toward
maritime dominion. Englishmen had bound their way
everywhere on the water that gain and fighting beckoned.
Nor were they the less successful because of the many
occasions on which there was little to distinguish the
acts of English armed merchantmen, or of vessels of the
royal navy, from those of out-and-buccaneers.
Thus we enter the seventeenth century and the
birthday of William Ward.
One hundred and eleven years have passed since the
discovery of the New World, and Spanish (and Portuguese)
colonization has progressed so far that there is a well
attended university in Mexico City, and other
universities and colleges in South America, yet the treat
territory comprised within the twentieth-century United
States and Canada stretched its broad expanse all but
untouched by the white man. For a hundred years English,
French, Spanish, and Portuguese have fished and summered
in the Newfoundland waters, and for more than half that
period occasional Frenchmen have hunted and traded along
the Saint Lawrence, but no settlers disputed the Indians'
possession save Spain's meager handful in Florida and her
few colonists in New Mexico.
The vast spaces have vainly invited. The mirage of
miracles having faded--disclosing neither the road to
Asia, nor gold, nor eternal life--the Spanish and
Portuguese openers of the New World continued to direct
their main energies southward, England and France had not
yet embarked upon their careers as colonizers, nor their
duel for New world empire.
Anther turn of the wheel is due. William Ward's
childhood sees the prologue of the conquest of the
continent. France establishes a little settlement at the
mouth of the Annapolis River, Nova Scotia--and another at
Quebec-- and, despite vicissitudes, they live. England
plants a colony in Virginia, also to be buffeted by
tribulations, but also it lives. England and France have
joined Spain in taking root in the North-American
continent.
Religious ferment, furthermore, is working to
fruition in England. In 1603 the large Puritan element in
the church--also the Roman Catholics-- had
6
WILLIAM WARDS YOUTH. HIS EMIGRATION
awaited the concessions they expected from the ascension
of Presbyterian king, James the sixth of Scotland and the
first of England, only to be hugely disappointed.
This disappointment stimulated a movement of prime
importance in the world's history.
While Ward was still a youth he heard the story of
the Pilgrims' venture and their struggle to maintain
their foothold in the "New England"--their heroic fight
against hunger and disease, their fearful losses; and,
later their final victory as a pioneer religious
community fairly established.
These happenings stimulated the imagination of many
Englishmen--and Englishwomen. Of influence too was a
slack in the woolen and shipbuilding and other callings.
There was not, and never has been, a large margin of
comfortable condition for the bulk of the population of
England, and the pinch of any depression quickly radiates
through the ranks.
So it came to pass that year by year more thousands
turned to the thought of a new life across the Atlantic
where opportunity night be greater, and presently in
increasing numbers they were migrating overseas" some to
Virginia, others to the West Indies, particularly to
Barbadoes.
By this time Ward was a young married man with
little John and Joanna in his home.
Then came the conception of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. 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
within the single span of 1630.
King Charles the First meantime had succeeded to the
throne. He elected to follow his father's policies and
was to travel still further the dangerous path of
absolutism. A good man in many ways, but with the wrong
viewpoint for the England of his reign and lacking the
strength to cope with the conditions which beset him. He,
as had his father, lacked also Queen Elizabeth's personal
patriotism, her intense nationalism, and her ability to
focus in herself her people's pride of growth and
achievement.
The year 1628 had seen the last English parliament
which was to meet for eleven years. There followed the
times in which the King, abetted by his Star Chamber,
trod heavily on English pride and sensibilities and
essayed the hazardous practice of helping himself to
funds by forced leans, compulsory knighthood's at high
prices, monopolies of (next page)
7
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
great variety, * and diverse other devices. When the
antiquated Ship Money levy was stretched to the breaking
point. When the country rolled uneasily in the suspicion
that the King's party, including the prelates, was
piloting it back into the Roman church. When Laud as
Archbishop earned the hatred of the Puritans which was in
a later year to cost him his head.
One or another, or all of these causes affected many
men of varied fortunes. The tide of emigration rose.
Taverns and other public places witnessed numerous sales
by auction, and much bargaining of miscellaneous farm and
household goods--country gentlemen and their yeoman
constituents raising money for the voyage and for their
settlement overseas, and disposing of such of their
belongings as they could not take with the. Laborers who
could not hope to pay for their passage obtained it by
hiring themselves out to work abroad for those who could.
Various arts of the New World were now open to
emigrants, but to Ward (as to many others) "New England"
seemed the most desirable, for there most nearly could
one hope to duplicate the old English village life. There
also could every man immediately become an independent
landowner--a strong appeal in all ages and especially
potent in parts where English village life had been
restricted in opportunity, and sometimes wiped out, by
the seizure and enclosure of thousands of acres of common
land by unscrupulous overlords. And of New England, the
Massachusetts Bay project was the largest and most
promising--particularly attractive furthermore to those
of strict Puritan faith, for its leaders had seized the
opportunity to establish in the New World a miniature
commonwealth molded on Puritan tenets and convictions.
Not that clear-headed men still expected to find an
El Dorado across the northern seas. The first New England
emigrants had been buoyed with roseate hopes, but those
who planned to follow needed, instead, high courage and
resolution. There were no longer visions of a land of "
milk and honey." The tales sent home in writing , or
brought back in person, had proved that the new domain
was not for dreamers or idlers. Many had gone unprepared
for the
* The privy council registers show that several
members of the Ward tribe got into trouble for disregard
for these royal edicts in "restraint of trade."
On October 22, 1634, A. Warde was arrested for
"divers misdeamanors and contempts, against his mats
proclamation" concerning tobacco and for " abusing his
Mats patentee for retayling of tobacco within ye towne 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 "graunted" to a Mr. Gill, and he was the
complainant whose protest resulted in the warrant.
(Spelling from the original)
8
WILLIAM WARDS YOUTH. HIS EMIGRATION
difficulties to be encountered, and "missing of their
expectations, returned home and railed against the
Country". Numbers had gone with the mistaken idea that
the colony would afford immediate support, and provisions
were frequently "deare and scant."
Various things had grown in the telling. The
rattlesnake was depicted as a flying creature that could
kill a man with its breath!
Yet each year saw a number of "Mayflowers" beating
their way across the ocean, each with its complement of
English families courageously seeking homes on the outer
rim of the great unknown continent of North America.
The quotations above are from Wood's "New England's
Prospect," a work which must have an impelling interest
for every descendant of William Ward of Sudbury, for it
is not to be doubted that he and his family devoured its
every line. The first edition appeared in 1634, with
succeeding issues in 1635 and 1637, so great was the
demand. One can picture the absorption with which its
pages were read--the most concise and complete
contemporary account of that part of the New World:
setting forth its attractions and disadvantage; telling
of its climate, of the products of its soil, of its
beasts, birds, and fishes, of the several "plantations"
already established; telling what clothing should be
included in an emigrant's equipment, what supplies he
should take with him. Concluding with a second part
devoted to the most fascinating topic of all--the
Indians, their appearance and habits, and their women,
etc. That the Indians in the vicinity of Massachusetts
Bay had, a few years earlier, been greatly reduced by
pestilence did not dissipate their fearsome glamour, but
rather added to it the threat of a new strange plague
that might at any time strike again.
Copies of the first edition of Wood's "New England
Prospect" bring high prices today. One was sold at a
recent Mew York auction for $2800, Anything below a
thousand dollars is a bargain.
It is an inspiring thought that a book which William
Ward purchased for a shilling or two should now be worth
$2800. It is will within possibility that the copy which
brought that price was the very one which he read and
discussed with his family.
The continued exodus to Massachusetts Bay excited
apprehension. The government felt that the conditions
were different from those of other English colonies.
Plymouth Colony with its meager population and scant
resources had
9
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
been regarded with complaisance even when it had failed
to develop into a financially profitable enterprise for
its underwriters. The settlements on the West Indies
greatly increased English trade and London incomes. Those
in Virginia also spelled large profits from the tobacco
trade, and in addition served as a welcome vent for those
"undesirables" whom the "Customer of London" described in
memorial to the Privy Council as "better out than within
the Kingdom." But another story was this recent
persistent emigration to New England, this "disorderly
passing out of the Kingdom," of thousands of British
subjects, carrying with them much wealth in cattle,
provisions, and other stores, to a part of the world
whose estimated future commerce with the mother country
was very small compared with the immediate drain upon
her.
Political exigencies had favored the first Puritan
exodus, but its revival in 1633 and its continuance in
the years following were very differently regarded. The
King and his Privy Council distrusted the new
transatlantic commonwealth and the expiring "Council for
New England" aided the plan to disrupt the charter of its
foundation. The Privy Council attempted to apply the
brakes and declared that none henceforth were to leave
without licenses. The requirements included oaths of
allegiance and affidavits that emigrants were not
"subsidy men"--i.e., subjects whose lands or goods had
been levied on to make up a "subsidy," or tax--and
searchers were appointed to prevent unlicensed
emigration. But the government was too troubled to be
efficient and the empire continued to leak much of its
issue for the upbuilding of a future rival.
How long Ward planned his emigration with his
family. I know not. Certain it is 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,
Mass.
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 stage-coach...
London may not have been entirely new to William
Ward, but it
10
WILLIAM WARDS YOUTH. HIS EMIGRATION
probably was for his family. It was a rambling sort of
city, almost entirely of wooden building, hugging the
shores of the Thames--the river its main highway, busy
both with ships to and from all parts of the world and
with boats of local traffic--the boats doing most of the
work for which taxis and other automobiles, motor-buses
and tricks, ply today.
A most picturesque city! The people who sat in the
boats, and those who passed along the irregular streets
ashore, would seem startlingly theatric to modern eyes.
All classes in England, particularly in London, had been
seized "with a age for apparel," and one saw not only
women most gaudily attired, but also men gong about their
daily tasks in satins and silks, with added doublets and
great ruffs around their necks, with colored feathers in
their hats and gold embroidery on their variously colored
shoes, with hair curled and perfumed and perhaps
ornamented with a rose or a piece of jewelry! Much of
this finery was soiled and often it was confined to only
one or two such touches--and on a costume most
incongruous--but, except the most degraded, few there
were who escaped entirely the infection of this fever for
self adornment. Think not however that there was
necessarily anything weak or effeminate about the man who
curled and perfumed his hair and carried a rose in it!
Those were days in which men held life cheaply and were
ready to take or surrender it at any moment on slight
provocation. Every man, unless he were very poor indeed,
carried a sword or a dagger, and if he had neither, he
probably carried, or had handy, a heavy stick or club as
a weapon of both offense and defense.
This "rage for apparel" had bred a new flock of
storekeepers. One writer complainingly notes that "Forty
years ago there were not twelve haberdashers in London
who sold fancy caps, glassed, swords, daggers, girdles;
and now from the Tower to West Minster Abbey, every
street is full of them."
The other extreme of the picture was furnished by
the very wretched poor, who lived and died homeless,
sick, and uncared for in the streets.
There was, indeed, much to be seen in London, but
for William Ward and his family there was nothing that
compared in interest with the eight vessels at their
moorings awaiting the day on which their masters should
set sail for America.
What style and size of craft were they that thus
engaged attention? Instead of a huge modern steamship,
picture a little vessel of about 200 tons--100 feet or so
in extreme length "from taffrail to knighthead"; 24 foot
beam
11
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
or thereabout; three-masted; short and low in the waist,
and high in bow and stern--somewhat "blocky" in general
effect. The very smallest transatlantic passenger vessel
sailing from New York today has thirty times her tonnage,
and the largest would make 250 to 300 of her!
She will travel slowly when she has taken on her
heavy load of humans, cattle, and freight, but she has
smart under-water lines which give fair speed under more
favorable conditions.
Several cannons of good size are on the main deck;
lighter hums on the poop; and a long-range large-caliber
hum on the forecastle. For in those days no ship went to
sea unarmed.
When full spread, her canvas wings display a small
sprit-sail, square sails on the fore and main masts, and
a lateen sail on the mizzen-mast.
Above all flies England's flag--the red cross of St.
George.
The passengers for these eight ships came by single
families, by twos and threes, and larger parties, from
various counties, north and south. Many brought with them
rumors which added to the general excitement. Would the
ships be allowed to sail? Most of those going had sold
all their belongings, often at high sacrifices, to
finance their emigration. Many, after paying for their
passage, had invested a considerable part of what money
remained in grain and other provisions, bought in a high
market, for their maintenance while establishing
themselves in New England. Few had the special emigration
licenses which the King's Council required. Suppose they
should be turned back? Suppose that even more drastic
punishment should be meted out?
There was a superabundance of time in which to worry
over these possibilities, for in 1638 one did not cross
the Atlantic on a modern steamship-company schedule.
There were may and long delays in getting started. The
outfitting was unconscionably slow. and when that was
finally completed one might wait for many days for
favorable winds. It was not uncommon for passengers to
live on board a vessel for weeks before it sailed.
Nor were the suspicions and fears unwarranted. The
apprehension aroused by the Puritan emigration had grown
to real alarm in high places. Among the complaints to
Laud was Maynard's, March 17, averring that such numbers
of persons of good abilities had sold their lands and
were departing, that divers parishes were in danger of
being impoverished, and that the emigrants were taking
with them so much grain that there would be hardly
12
WILLIAM WARDS YOUTH. HIS EMIGRATION
enough left in the country to serve till harvest. And
straightway from the Council issued and order to the Lord
Treasurer to detain every ship gong to New England, and
to put all passengers and their goods ashore.
Instructions also were issued to sheriffs and other
officials to seek out and hold all provisions stored with
intent to ship them to America.
Picture the consternation on the seeing of the Lord
Treasurer's order. Their plans apparently destroyed.
Compelled to quit the ship of their long-planned
migration, and set ashore with the effects which
represented so much sacrifice, labor, and expense. Their
old homes broken up and their new home denied them.
Fortunately it was not only the emigrants who were
affected. Merchants and shipowners found these emigrant
voyages very profitable, the ships on their return being
laden with fish from Newfoundland. The order in
consequence aroused so many influential protests that the
Council bowed to the storm and revoked it, setting the
ships "at libertie to proced on in their intended
voyage." In so doing King Charles could not refrain from
slapping at those of his subjects who had chosen a home
in New England rather than remain within the closer range
of his benevolence, by referring to "the factious
disposition of the people (or a great qte of them) in
that plantation and how unfit and unworthy they are of
any support or of contenance."
With so changeable a government, one could not tell
what new proclamation the next messenger night bring. It
was with joy and relief that the emigrants saw the
anchors raised and the ships proceed one by one down the
Thames and tack slowly around the North Foreland on the
first leg of their voyage to the New World.
We do not know whither or not William Ward and his
family were on board one of the ships, but is very
probable that they were.
13
The Voyage
The emigrant ships sailed slowly seaward. Round into
the Downs and through the Straits of Dover into the
Channel, where contrary winds and heavy seas were wont to
levy long delays and deal out the full woes and miseries
of seasickness.
On past Portsmouth to drop anchor at Yarmouth, Isle
of Wight, a favorite rendezvous for vessels bound to and
from the Indies and many other parts of the world--
traders, fishing-boats, and men-of-war.
Here the captains filled their water-casks and took
on additional wood and a supply of fresh fish, the
emigrants meantime enjoying themselves ashore--for most
of them, the last time they were to walk on English soil.
In turn was much visiting, some very formal, between
shore and ship, and between the ships themselves.
Advantage was also taken of the opportunity to test the
passengers at musket practice, for the sea was full of
enemies, and the Turkish pirate a continual anxiety.
There was a gun and a sword for every man aboard. The
number of emigrant sail would spell safety at the start,
but when separated by the variability of wind or ship, it
might fare ill with any bark which found herself outsized
by a Turk.
Even more to be feared than a real Turk was an
encounter with one of the numerous English and French
pirates flying the Turkish flag--or any other that suited
their purpose.
Then out of Yarmouth, sailing W. by S. and W. by N.
until the horizon began to immerse the Scilly Islands. As
each ship witnessed the blending of land and sky, the
emigrants pressing together on its poop for a last view
of the Old World knew this for a fateful moment! They
were full abreast the Atlantic, and, even though but
started, thus measurably on their way to New England.
Now for weeks, perhaps months--for fifty days was a
quick passage--the vessel under their feet will confine
their while world, severing them from the hemisphere of
their forefathers and filling its sails with their lives,
their hoped, and their fears.
I repeat that it is only a supposition that William
Ward and his family
14
THE VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND
were aboard one of the ships of the little fleet whose
sailing I have chronicled, but this I will vouch-- that
these pages, both in what they have already told and in
what follows, present a veracious picture of an emigrant
voyage of the time. Every member of the family may accept
it, and ponder and ream over it, as depicting the
transatlantic coming of his or her first American
ancestor.
It was a terribly crowded little ship for such a
long voyage. Aboard were close upon a hundred and fifty
souls, including the crew ( who perhaps numbered thirty),
and a great quantity of miscellaneous freight.
The captain, the most distinguished passengers, and
some of the women and children were berthed in the cabins
on each side of the big Common Cabin, or saloon, under
the poop-deck; the others in cabins and (single men) in
hammocks and open bunks between decks, The crew bunked in
the forecastle.
The cattle, and goats and poultry, were housed in
pens on the forward deck.
The ship's and passenger' stores of while grains,
meal, salt meats, peas, and other provisions were stowed
in the hold. Much bulky fodder, too, for the cattle, And
tools, farming implements, and household and personal
effects, overflowed from the hold and filled every
available square foot between decks.
On fair days, meals were enjoyed on the main and
poop decks; otherwise at bench-tables in the Common Cabin
and between decks.
But picture not a bugle nor a gong, and the
passengers trooping down to a hot meal already prepared,
The ship provided sufficient food (deputed passengers
distributing it to families or groups) but she furnished
her passengers with neither cooks nor stewards. Before
they could enjoy a fresh-cooked meal, they must
themselves cook it! Also they must wait upon themselves.
Jolly enough in good weather, for the divided duties
helped to while away the hours, but in bad weather and in
sickness entailing not a little hardship.
The supplies furnished by the ship for the main
meal, at noon, consisted generally of salt beef or pork,
or cheese ( salt cod or smoked erring on "fish days",
peas (or some other vegetable, as cabbage or turnips),
"biscuit" (hard tack, or ship-bread, taken aboard in
great quantity in barrel), and beer. Reasonably
satisfying provender, but very monotonous when often
repeated. No wonder that a catch of fresh fish meant a "
merry feast"!
Well-informed voyagers of sufficiently full
pocketbooks fared better,
15
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
for they had planned to spice the ship's diet with "some
comfortable refreshing of fresh victual" from private
stores of apples, lemons, prunes, preserves, biscuit of
finer quality, claret, etc.--and even a few live fowls
and sheep to be slaughtered aboard.
The ships galley provided the equipment for group
cooking. For the preparation of special individual and
family dishes--for the stewing of prunes, or burning of
claret, or frying of bacon--the passengers had brought
their own skillets and frying-pans.
On stormy days no cooking at all could be done.
Lucky then if anything could be got at and if one did not
find that the salt water had wrought havoc on the bread-
room!
The lack of fire was felt less than it would be
today. A twentieth-century ocean voyage without tea or
coffee would seem incredible, but those emigrants knew
neither, nor drank water except under compulsion of
circumstances. They enjoyed their beer instead.
A very small vessel fighting its way across a very
great ocean. Day after day and night after night alone
upon the face of the waters. The eight and twelve o'clock
watches set with a prayer and the singing of a psalm.
Sometimes becalmed; at others heavily buffeted by
the elements. If winds were unfavorable, days were
consumed where hours would now suffice. "Ten leagues a
watch," seven and a half miles an hour, though not
maximum, was being "carried apace."
To the children, living actively in the present
without a past to breed anxiety for the future, the long
voyage was less trying than to their parents, but all the
more vivid the impressions it stamped upon their minds to
last throughout their lives.
`Twas a day of excitement when a sail drew eager
eyes to the horizon. This might happen four or five times
during the several weeks at sea. Perchance an Englishman
or a Frenchman, or two or three of them together, bound
for the Newfoundland fishing-banks, or a boar from
Virginia or the Somers Islands (as the Bermudas were then
generally styled). Perchance, also, a pirate--do feelings
were mixed until a ship's identity was discerned.
With so many people closely housed, there was,
inevitable, some friction, and how and then a trifle of
disorderly conduct. As the case of the man who "was whipt
naked at the Cap-stern, with a Cat with Nine tails, for
filching 9 great Lemons out of the Chirurgeons Cabbin,
which he eat rinds and all in less than an hours time."
And that other who created a disturbance, being
drunk with "strong
16
THE VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND
waters" which he had stolen, and who for punishment was
ducked at the main-yard's arm.
Omens were read in natural phenomena and raised
hope, or spread alarm, as superstition interpreted them.
One night " a flame settled upon the main mast, it
was about the bigness of a great Candle, and is called by
our Seamen St. Elmo's fire. It comes before a storm, and
is commonly thought to be a "Spirit." A somewhat common
occurrence in the days of wooden ships, and electric glow
appearing at night on a ship's spars, but full of mystic
significance to early mariners.
Then, a tempest to test every seagoing quality. The
waves mountainous above the little vessel as she wallowed
in the troughs; the sky shut off by flying foam; the
decks continuously awash and the sea searching down until
between-decks ran in streams. Impossible for even the
experienced sailors to move about, or to stand, or to
sit, or to lie, save by desperately gripping rail or
rope. The waves and wind buffeting and tossing and
twisting the ship until it seemed impossible that she
could withstand their force.
The emigrants, with awe straining their hearts at
this proof of their insignificance, humbled themselves
before their Maker, glorified His power, and supplicated
His assistance and protection.
Only those who have ridden through a heavy storm in
a ship of the early emigrant size, 200 tons or so, can
realize how vividly the experience must have impressed a
company of farmers on their first voyage. It is vastly
more sensational than when you have a 50,000 ton, or even
a 10,000 ton, vessel challenging the elements.
When the passengers emerged on deck after the sea
had subsided, they looked fully as distressed as the ship
herself, They were bruised and chilled and sick from the
storm's rough treatment, and from lying for many hours in
wet cloths on wet bedding, their lungs poisoned by the
foul air of the battened interior.
But bad weather past is quickly forgotten when skies
turn fair and comfortable breezes fill the sails.
As soon as possible, bedding and clothes were
brought up on deck to be dried. A peculiar looking vessel
then, if onlookers there had been--with wearing apparel
and blankets and mattresses spread all over her as though
she were come queer ocean dry-goods market.
As the novelty of sea life wore off, many hours
dragged tediously, but "ever and anon" the voyagers found
instruction and delight in watching the various creatures
of "the great waters": the sea-bats," or flying fish;
the tiny
17
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
carvels sailing along the surface; the big sunfish, the
"porpoises," and the "mighty whales."
The whales astonished the new voyagers by their
size, and excited apprehension when they "spouted water
through two great holes in their heads," the water
pouring down again "like a river" so that if it "should
light in any Ship, she were in danger" of being "sunk
sown into the Sea," the water falling "with such and
extreme violence" as to make "the Sea to boyle like a
pot, and if any Vessel be near, it sucks it in."
The most consistently entertaining of all were the
"porpoises," or "herring-hogs," their antics of
uproarious delight to the youngsters.
A porpoise would occasionally be harpooned and
hoisted aboard. The farmer-passengers were keenly
interested in the first one caught, noting that it was in
size, shape, and meat a good deal like a hog.
Its flesh was cut "into thin pieces, and fryed."
Opinions differed as to its desirability. Some found that
it tasted "like rusty Bacon, or hung Beef, if not worse";
but they were contradicted be less captious voyagers who
affirmed that , properly cooked and seasoned, it made
good eating.
Among other curious sea-denizens to find their way
into the skillets or kettles were occasional specimens of
the flying-fish, and swordfishes and a shark or two. The
flesh of the shark found little favor, but its brains
were in those days prized as a great delicacy and
considered a valuable medicine for women in childbirth.
Later, the voyagers marveled at the first iceberg
sighted... "an Island of Ice... three leagues in length,
mountain high, in form of land, with Bayes and Capes...
and a river pouring off it into the Sea... two or three
foxes or Devils skipping upon it."
Next were gained the famous "Banks" of Newfoundland.
Heavy fogs made progress slow there but compensation was
to hand in an abundance of fresh cod for little trouble
in catching, and great numbers of waterfowl.
Of high interest as the vessel neared its
destination was the meeting of boats with fresh tidings
of New England. Happenings there, had become matters of
personal concern, instead of belated far-away stories of
a remote continent:
"At 4 of the clock we descryed two sail bound for
New-found-land, and so for the Streights, they told us of
a general Earth-quake in Mew England, of the Birth of a
Monster at Boston, in the Massachusets-bay a mortality."
18
THE VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND
Meat in that little batch of news for much thought,
conversation, and conjecture!
Then, never to be forgotten, the first sight of the
New World--stirring to a fever the hopes and ambitions
which had driven the emigrants across the ocean.
Only a few hours longer, and land is finally drawn
into "clear and comfortable sight," the sea-worn little
ship sailing proudly along the New England coast. Seen
thus, and at that season, in its happiest aspect, it
fulfilled their every vision of a wondrous promised land.
Water and land joined in the promise. Schools of mackerel
encompassed the ship, and mainland and islands alike were
rich in verdure.
As the ship lay by near Cape Ann, a few of the most
favored emigrants experienced the happy adventure of
actually setting foot upon the shore, bringing back ripe
wild strawberries and gooseberries, and fragrant wild
roses.
Cape Ann and the islands near by were early famous
for wild strawberries. It is not to be doubted that the
berries were trebled in delicious delicacy by the many
weeks of salt meat, nor that their fresh flavor lingered
forever in the memory.
Then sailing on again for the last miles of the long
voyage, each moment and each detail of entrancing
interest.
The panorama continued to unfold until finally our
Emigrant Ship passed the narrow entrance into the "still
Bay of Massachusetts" and came within view of the three
hills of Old Boston-- as momentous to the world's history
as ever were the Seven Hills of Rome.
19
The First Weeks in the New World
At the time of William Ward's arrival, Boston was
only about eight years old but it had already achieved a
population of a thousand or so, and it palpitated with
life for it was one of the main portals through which the
English race was entering a continent.
It was essentially a pioneer town. Its streets were
unpaved. Its wooden buildings were interspersed with a
larger number constructed mainly of clay and sod, for the
peninsula offered the settlers so little timber that they
were compelled to carry it by water from the harbor
islands or from the mainland. There were only about
thirty residences of sufficient size to command a
traveler's respect.
The town entered on that part of the peninsula
running back from the "Great Cove" on the east side. Its
business heart was around the inner Bendall's Cove, then
the chief landing-place but now for many years solid
ground--part of it is the site of Faneuil hall. Thence
the twin business of shipping and merchandising extended
southerly to the foot of the road which is the westerly
portion of the State Street of today. There were
warehoused along the wharves and in their vicinity, and
other warehouses and shops (of ships' and general
supplies) and residences along "State Street," where also
was the town's one thatched church and its whipping-post.
The thirty larger houses (including just one of
brick!) were furnished much like those of the moderately
well-to-do in the England of the time. They sheltered the
leaders of the community, the more prosperous, the
socially elect--for emigrant ships, be it remembered,
carried social distinctions among the diversity of their
cargoes.
Trade and traffic were far in excess of what might
have been expected of the population of a thousand.
Boston's position as the link connecting the colony with
other parts of the world--the shipping and the continuous
arrival of immigrants--furnished employment for many
people and numerous business opportunities. The butcher
and wine merchant, the linen draper and apothecary, the
carpenter and plasterer, the tailor and shoemaker, the
shipwright and blacksmith--all there callings, and
numerous other, were represented.
20
THE FIRST WEEKS IN THE NEW WORLD
Many sails rested in the harbor. Nearly every week
during the spring and summer of that year saw one or more
ships from England carrying additions to the rapidly
growing population. With them lay from time to time ships
trading from and with Virginia and the very young
settlement of Maryland, the Dutch in New York, and the
French in Canada. Occasionally also an Indian pinnace or
two.
The peninsula then contained fewer than 800 acres,
for this was generations before broad stretches of marsh
and shallow water were filled in to serve as foundations
for the building of great city streets. On the south it
was joined to the mainland by the narrow extremity of a
low-lying, marshy neck of ground completely submerged by
high tides in the spring, Boston then becoming an island,
On the north it was separated by a strip of water, about
a quarter of a mile in width, from another smaller
peninsula of similar contour--that later to become famous
as Charlestown and for the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The Boston peninsula had very good land, "affording
rich Cornefields, and fruitful Garden; having likewise
sweete and pleasant Springs," but it offered insufficient
pasture, so that the inhabitants early extended their
holdings to the mainland.
Ward unquestionably went "sightseeing" with his
family. They traversed the crooked roads around the
wharves, and walked up "State Street," stopping to gaze
at Governor Winthrop's residence--the main hall of the
Exchange Building now covers the site of the house he
occupied in 1638. Then past the meeting-house to the
market-place, and along "Washington Street," Pausing to
view the house in which Anne Hutchinson had lived. She
was no longer there, for the opening of the spring of
1638 had seen her excommunicated and banished from
Massachusetts for expounding an unorthodox "Covenant of
Grace." They wandered next over the common, notable in
several periods of American history--the park of today,
the cow pasture of then.
Probably one fine day or another saw them follow the
new `footway" over the neck to Roxbury, noting the log
rails which "secured the cattle from the wolves" and the
defenses to guard against Indian attacks.
In Roxbury they must have admired the further
evidences of New World prosperity, for already at the
time of Wood's "New England Prospect" it had become "a
faire and handsome Countrey-towne; the inhabitants of it
being all very rich."
Thence to Dorchester, the third of the triplet of
peninsulas, the first settlement in the Massachusetts
Bay, "well wooded and watered," with "very good arable
grounds, and Hay-ground, faire Corne-fields, and pleasant
21
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
Gardens, with Kitchin-Gardens: In this plantation is a
great may Cattle, as Kine, Goats, and Swine, This
plantation hath a reasonable Harbour for ships..." but
"here is no Alewife-river, which is a great
inconvenience.
When Wood wrote, Dorchester was "the greatest Towne
in New England," In the few brief years that had elapsed,
the palm had passed to Boston, never to be returned.
Another probable visit was to Charlestown--over the
ferry, a big rowboat, at a penny a head.
Dividing interest with the country itself was its
varied social, political, and religious life. The men
among the immigrants mingled freely in the town
"ordinary" with the colonists already established, and
over their beer and cider swapped gossip from the old
world for tales of the new. Ward heard the full story of
the massacre of the Pequot Indians and the practical
extermination of the tribe, of the turmoil that had
preceded Anne Hutchinson's expulsion, and of the great
earthquake; and listened to debates on the prospects of
the new separate colony of Connecticut. He followed also
a discussion on the possibility of taming moose to do the
work of oxen, and found interest in the peculiar
diversity of the money in use--the Indian shell-beads, or
"wampum," loose and in strings, which passed as currency
everywhere, and the musket-bullets which had taken the
place of farthings.
Meantime, the family learned the diet of New
England. Fish and shellfish there were in great abundance
to supplement the salt pork and salt beef--lobsters that
weighed thirty pounds, had fifteen-inch pincers, and a
total length (with claws pulled out straight) of close
upon four feet. Of novelties was Indian corn as samp,
"hasty pudding," nocake, etc., in bread made of cornmeal
and rye flour, and the ears plain boiled.
A dish of "corn on the cob" then was more
picturesque than it is today. Yellow and white were the
common colors for the ears, but these were varied not
only with the red with which we are familiar but with
various other hues--olive and other green tints, blue,
and, black, and speckled and striped and mottled.
Milk, also, was a very important article. Bread and
milk vied with mush and milk as a staple breakfast and
supper dish. There were, too, "pompion" (pumpkin) and
milk, and berries and milk--native whortleberries and
strawberries, etc.
The "sightseeing" did not consume more than two or
three days for after all there was not a great deal to
see in that very new Boston of long ago-
22
THE FIRST WEEKS IN THE NEW WORLD
-and what there was, was quickly reached by English legs
well trained in walking. So Ward returned to the
important task of establishing himself and his family.
Numerous choices presented themselves, for the line
of civilization was spreading over the eastern part of
Massachusetts by successive "swarming" from the points
first settled, as ship after ship discharged its
passengers and spread the rising tide of population.
Before 1638 eighteen "towns," or organized groups of
settlers, had achieve existence of Massachusetts Bay.
The sites most sought were those which contained a
good water supply, sufficient pasture, and open land
which could with the smallest amount of labor be used for
the planting of grain. Timber also was an essential, but
that was discussed little as it was found in nearly every
part of the colony outside of Boston.
Among the most promising was the tract, named
"Sudbury" in 1639, whose settlement had been projected by
a number of the inhabitants of Watertown and had been
approved by the colony legislature, the "General Court."
It was part of the Concord River region known among the
Indians as "Musketahquid," signifying "grassy ground" or
"grassy brook." It adjoined Watertown (the part now
Weston) on the east and the new Concord "plantation" on
the north. Its attractions included the river (Sudbury
River) and smaller streams traversing it, a rich acreage
of pasture (or "meadow") alongside them, and open woods.
Crossing the southeasterly section was the "Old Bay
Path," an Indian trail which ran for hundreds of miles
inland from the sea and which had already become an
accepted route for settlers journeying to the Connecticut
River.
23
Founding Sudbury, Mass.
Ward decided to join the Sudbury "plantation." Of
like mine 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 tile was obtained
by purchase from the Indian "Cato" (known also as "Karte"
and "Goodman").
As already noted, 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 "powwow," 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 (Ward among them?) anticipated this formal
authorization and 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 form patches selected for
24
FOUNDING SUDBURY
the planting of the first "common," or community, fields.
Of great moment were 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 these 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.
Ward's 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 (see the map facing page
26). 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 some 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.
25
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
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. Ward 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.
As became pioneers, the heads of families were of
active years. Only one of the newcomers from England had
passed fifty. Perhaps three or four were between forty
and fifty. All the others were under forty. Ward was
about thirty-five.
Then came the winter. Those who have experienced the
severity of a Massachusetts winter, even amidst modern
conditions, may imagine how rigorous it must have seemed
to those immigrants from milder England. It was no small
labor even to cut the wood to feed the big open
fireplaces. There were also the cattle to care for, roads
to be "broken out" after a heavy snowfall (by ox-sleds
and plows drawn by all available ox-teams), and (when
weather permitted) the clearing of ground for cultivation
in the spring, the building of wall fences, etc.
But they fought it through and by the spring of 1639
the township had been successfully founded.
26
Pioneer Life in Old Massachusetts
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 ffamylie 06 akers
"To every Wiffe 06 akers & 1/2
"To every childe 01 akers & 1/2
"to Every Mare, Cow, ox or anny other Cattle that may
amount to 20 pound, or soe much monnye 3 Akers."
Only the resolution has been preserved. There is no
record of such a distribution. If made, Ward 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.
27
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
They served also as a basis for taxation, the rates
being levied in the same proportion.
Ward'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 Ward. Several were given
similar allowances.
The land being parceled out at various times (its
location within certain limits being generally decided by
lot) a man's real property came to consist of a number of
scattered pieces--much after the fashion of the acre and
half-acre "strips" of early English villages. This gave
every one representation in each section opened, but it
increased the difficulties of ownership and led to
numerous sales and exchanges.
Important too was the election of town officials,
particularly of "selected men" to serve as executives of
the township and as its informal local judiciary.
Selectmen under pioneer conditions held widely
diversified authority, both delegated and assumed. They
were necessarily of character and standing among their
associates, and generally "freemen," i.e., those who had
taken the "freeman's oath."
The term "freeman" signified in Massachusetts at
that date a fully qualified voter. The chief requirement
was membership in a duly recognized church. Membership
signified admission to the church corporation. It did not
refer to attendance at worship. Everyone physically able
attended church whether a member or not.
The spring and summer of 1639 saw a good many acres
under cultivation and every spare moment occupied in
building fences and breaking more land, both in the
common planting fields and in "men's particular fields."
There was "store of plowland" but it was difficult
t break up "by reason of the oaken roots... this kinde of
land requires great strength to break up, yet brings very
good crops, and lasts long without mending."
A grist-mill was built by a miller with the
appropriate name of Cakebread. The community gave him 130
acres by way of encouragement.
* These figures are from an original "record of the
names of the inhabitants of Sudbury, with their severall
quantity of meadow to every one granted according to
their estates or graunted by gratulation for services
rendered by them, which meadow is ratable upon all common
charges." This is given in the first part of the first
book of records. It bears no original date. The "1638"
that some town clerk added is incorrect and has been
erased. 1639 would probably be accurate for the first two
divisions at all events.
At this point one may question the assumption of
this genealogy that William Wad settled on the Sudbury
tract in 1638, for his name does not appear on an 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.
28
PIONEER LIFE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS
Mills did not then convent grain into the finished
flour we know. Their work ended with grinding it into
meal. "Bolting" the meal was a domestic duty.
Accomplished by means of hair or cloth sieves.
There was a vast amount of labor to be performed.
Those who are related to families who have taken up
government claims, or "quarter-sections." during this
generation, know how hard has often been the strugle to
establish a living competence, even though shielded from
all hostiles, both red and white; though spared the loss
of time and population incidental to war, and aided in
many ways by improved means and conditions in
agriculture. There were no government bureaus or
experimental stations to serve the farmers of those days.
The settlers must of their own strength and courage meet
all the difficulties of opening a new country, and in
addition be ever ready to insure their titles in a rain
of blood. It was only the simplicity of their lives that
rendered possible the comfortable prosperity which
followed their efforts.
There was the important mitigation that much of
their toil was in neighborly companionship. There was
little of the lonely isolation that weighed on the later
pioneers of the western states. "Rich' or poor, they
labored at similar tasks and often side by side, and they
all owned a share in the constructive pride of seeing a
new township take form as the result of their toil.
Community obligations, too, were equitably divided.
The richer the man's stake in the district--not only the
higher the rates he paid, but also the more community
labor expected of him. An early order required all
inhabitants to "come forth to the mending of the great
road" upon a summons by the surveyor: the "poorest men"
to work one day; the others to work a day for every six
acres of meadow owned.
A church was organized in 1640 (with, of course,
Congregational form and Calvinistic creed), the Reverend
Edmund Brown being engaged as pastor. His salary for his
initial year was 40 (pounds), half in cash and half in
produce.
He must have held services in the cabins during his
first winters, for work on the meeting-house was not
commenced until 1643.
This first meeting-house stood in the "Old Burying-
ground" which abuts on the Old Sudbury Road near Wayland
Village. It was perhaps set a little back of the supposed
site which is marked by a slight embankment and a granite-
imbedded bronze marker. It stood across the highway from
the row of twenty or more house-lots mentioned on page
25.
29
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
Opposite is a reduced facsimile of the contract for
its construction William Ward being one of the six men
who signed for the township. *
(THIS MAY NOT BE ON THIS COPY).
This document is of the haze which obscures his
prior life, and assumes definite form visioned in the
mirror of his associates, and of his and their acts.
What type of man was he? Of what character and what
circumstances?
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 settlers 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 Ward--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." Ward was the only one of the
six neither well-to-do nor a freeman.
The erection of the meeting-house frame took place
in May, 1643. Every man in the settlement was on hand to
help, for "raising time" was a jolly occasion in Old New
England, with plenty of substantial food and inspiriting
beverages to stimulate and reward the workers.
The completed meeting-house was only a rough,
raftered building, 20 by 30 feet in size, with plain
wooden benches and sanded floors, but it served as a
veritable social and political center. It was in many
respects a replica of the English parish church as it had
been prior to the time of Laud.
At the drum-beat signal, the inhabitants gathered to
it every Sunday morning, each taking the seat assigned to
him (its position denoted his standing in the community)
to profit by the minister's long sermon and fervid
* It will be observed that in the church contract Ward's surname appears as "Warde." As noted on page 3 he was known by both styles during his first years in Massachusetts. The two spellings were, in general use, long practically interchangeable. Some o his twentieth- century descendants have re-adopted the "e." The original writing of the date "1642" for a contract made in 1643 is a reminder that the ecclesiastical and legal year then commenced on the twenty-fifth of March, instead of the January 1st of the historical year. On the upper date line the "2" was changed to a "3." The date on the canceled clause at the foot of the page remains clearly "1642." ** 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."
30
PIONEER LIFE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS
exhortations, and to take part in the singing of psalms
from the "Bay Psalm Book," now known as the "Old Bay
Psalm Book" but then a very new volume, published only
three years before and the first book (save an almanac,
it that be a book) printed in English America.
On occasion also, as the years went by, the
confession of doctrinal or moral sins by members, and
once in a while testimony, or "prophecy," by visitors.
Long, long services. In winter, a severe test of
the physical endurance of both minister and congregation,
for no fire was allowed to temper the freezing
atmosphere. Nor much less a trial on torrid summer days.
But in contrast the more enjoyable was the noon
intermission in one or other of the near-by houses, there
to refresh both with food and drink and with welcome
social intercourse.
The community life revolving around the meeting-
house was much fuller and much brighter than has
generally been depicted. Banish the idea of somberness.
It does not fit a crowd of men and women of kindred
interests, chatting over their beer, cider, or rum, with
the rough jocosity and wide freedom of those times--a
community furthermore which knew its neighbors most
intimately--so will that every happening found its
reflection in another's, or many others', experience.
They probably derived at least as much pleasure from
their broad jokes and neighborly converse as the modern
family does from its afternoon at the movies, unless the
show is very good indeed!
The Boston artisan and shop-clerk felt sadly
cramped, and frequently and variously rebelled at Sabbath
restrictions--and children and youths of communities of
all sizes were restless under the repression of their
inherent activity--but strict "Lord's Day" observance was
not considered irksome by the adults of the farming
lands. If (being a woman) you are continuously busy
during six days at the spinning-wheel and with cooking,
washing, and cleaning, it is not much of a punishment to
sit restfully down in the company of your neighbors and
listen to, or doze through, even the longest sermon,
except the weather be extreme. Golf was not for the men
of those families. After following the plow, or building
stone fences for six days in a week, they would have
found no zest in pursuing a little ball over their
pastures on the Seventh. And motoring in its colonial
forms of driving and riding lacked both novelty and
pleasurable roads.
Even their costumes! Whence came the tradition of a
drab Puritan?
31
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
They had not left all vanities behind them in the Old
Country. The women particularly, but not exclusively,
were much given to "slashed clothes" and lace and
embroidery. So string indeed was the love of dress and
display that numerous laws were passed to curb the "great
supfluores and unnecessary expenses" occasioned both by
"newe and immodest fashions" and by the "ordinary
weareing" of lace, and gold and silver girdles, etc. And
a crowd of men of the twentieth century would feel
themselves the very reverse of somberly attired if decked
out with green and red waistcoats, enlivened with a
sprinkling of red caps, and perhaps "ruffs" and some gold
or silver lace. Yet so were our colonists clothed.
The meeting-house was, furthermore, made to pay its
way by various other general uses. It served as a proud
new place for the town meetings which ruled the miniature
republic, the meetings now opened with a prayer by Pastor
Brown. Presently, too, it drew the inhabitants for the
Thursday "lecture."
Also within its walls was stored the community's
reserve supply of gunpowder--a dire essential, for
William Ward's Sudbury was not the sheltered village of
later generations. Over its "50 or 60 families" with
"about 80 souls in Church fellowship," always hung the
possibility of a life and death struggle with the
aborigines. No Indian trouble of any magnitude had
disturbed the immigrants who arrived after the Pequat
War, but the "red danger" was no imaginary fear as
everyone was to learn in after years.
The need of constant vigilance was fully recognized
by the provincial deputies. Every township was required
to organize and drill its "trainband," or militia
company, to keep a stated reserve of gunpowder to agree
upon alarm signals, and to arrange a safe retreat for
women and children.
Also at various times the General Court ordered the
sending out of "carefull and daly skouts for the
rainginge of the woods upon the borders" of the towns and
in 1645 (just two years after Sudbury raised its meeting-
house) came instructions "by reason of the psent warre
with the Indians," to have part of their "souldiers"
ready to march at "halfe an houres warning." Thus early
we find the idea that a hundred and thirty years later
produced the Minute-Men of the Revolution!
It was not sufficient that every able-bodied man
belong to his town-ship train-band. On May 14, 1645, the
General Court advised the training of boys in the use of
both bow and arrow and firearms:
32
PIONEER LIFE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS
"Whereas it is conceived yt ye training up of youth to ye art & practice of armes wilbe of great use in ys country in divers respects, & amonge ye rest yt ye use of bowes & arrows may be of good concermt, in defect of powder, upon any occasion it is therefore ordered, yt all, youth wthin this jurisdiction, from ten yeares ould to ye age of sixeteen yeares, shalbe instructed, by some one of ye officrs of ye band, or some othr experienced souldier whom ye chiefe officer shall appoint, upon ye usuall training dayes, in ye exercise of armes, as small guns, halfe pikes, bowes & arrowes, &c, according to ye discretion of ye said officer or souldier, pvided yt no child shalbe taken to ys exrcise against yir parents minds; ys ordr to be of force wthin one month after ye publication hereof."
So we must picture young Obadiah, then thirteen, and
Richard, ten, practicing on the Common, supplementing the
martial preparations of father William and big brother
John.
This, too, was an echo of old-country memories, for
it had been the custom in Southhampton and other exposed
English coast-towns to require all children, commencing
with the age of seven, to practice archery as a measure
of public protection.
Sudbury's position was considered so precarious that
the same General Court forbade any emigration from the
township save by special permit:
"In regard of the great danger that Concord, Sudberry, and Dedham wilbe exposed unto, being inland townes & but thinly peopled, it is ordered, that no man now inhabiting & settleed in any of the said townes (whither married or single) shall remove to any other towne without the allowance of a magistrate, or other select men of that towne."
On May 10, 1643, Ward 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.
Ward'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 returne
theire objections & thaughts thereof to this howse in
wrighteinge."
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.
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THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
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 alike, 130
acres each, the locations being decided by lot. Ward's
total holdings thus rose to between two and three hundred
acres. The change of hemisphere had been well rewarded.
The colony likewise had proved its strength and
vitality, standing firmly now on its own feet. The tide
of immigration had stopped. Other colonies chiefly
attracted those who left the old country--emigrants found
life easier in the West Indies. The development of the
Massachusetts which was later to challenge the mother
country was left to the descendants of the original
settlers who had carved homes out of its wilderness.
The change had brought a commercial crisis to
Massachusetts but she had weathered it and worked out her
salvation in her own way, greatly increasing as a
substitute her ship-carried barter and trade, especially
with the West Indies. She fought her own fight through
the crisis, entirely unaided by the mother country, but
also undisturbed by it, for King Charles was too busy
engaged to interfere, too thoroughly occupied with
efforts to retain the crown slipping from his head.
34
Policies and Suffrage in Old Massachusetts
The cardinal policies that quickly developed in the
Massachusetts commonwealth were practical independence
for the colony, identity of church and state, and
intolerance of all "unorthodox" religions.
Bearing on the first point, the "foreign policy" of
the Massachusetts Bay pioneers is easily summed up in the
determination of their leaders to resent any interference
with their methods of self-government and the charter
upon which they based and built their rights--or claims.
An appeal to England was considered an act of treason, to
be thwarted by any means--by exile, imprisonment, or
death; and the chief necessity, an undivided front
opposed to all attempts of the English government,
secular or religious, to extend its control. Firmly set
was their intent to establish their own plans and ideas
of government upon the virgin soil that fate and
themselves had given into their keeping.
Equally emphasized is the identity of church and
state. The colonial government soon came under the
potential control of the people by the annual election of
the governor, assistants, deputies, military officers,
etc., but complete suffrage was (as already noted) early
limited to church members. Until 1664 only "freemen"
could vote for governor, assistants, or deputies, or fill
such offices, and only freemen could hold military rank.
And commencing with 1631 only members of orthodox
Congregational churches were eligible for the freeman's
oath. From 1635 to 1647 there existed also a law to debar
non-freemen from holding township positions and rendering
them ineligible to vote on town matters of importance.
A considerable proportion of the adult males of 1638
were freemen, but various circumstances, chiefly creed
dissensions and restrictions, resulted until 1664 in a
decreasing percentage if inhabitants who could, or would,
qualify by accepting orthodox covenants. It is estimated
that only one in five or one in six were freemen in 1664.
These statements may suggest, as has often been
stated, that a majority of the inhabitants were
politically inarticulate. Under Massachusetts conditions
the practical result was very far from anything of the
sort. In the
35
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
country townships (i.e., throughout the greater part of
the colony) non-freemen largely disregarded legislative
restrictions and took an active and official part in the
management of their communities; * and local opinion was
so vital a force that there seems no reason to doubt that
the inhabitants of Massachusetts would have compelled the
annulment of the church membership qualification if there
had been any deep general dissatisfaction with it, or if
legislation or executive authority had shown itself
inimical to the material rights of those not
enfranchised. Had there been an attempt to withhold
suffrage against public opinion, the Massachusetts Bay
men could have taken it by pressure of numbers, as the
freemen took the reins of government from the unwilling
hands of those "principal men" in whom. its temporary
possessors, it had commenced to crystallize.
It should further be noted for its influence on
public sentiment that, within the church membership,
suffrage was free to all men, poor or well-to-do. This
gave full voting power to poor men who were disbarred
when property qualifications were substituted.
The restriction of suffrage gave to the colony
leaders very real power over religious professions and
observances so long as they could hold the support of the
freemen, because those outside the pale were divided or
indifferent, but no autocratic pretension on secular
subjects could have existed.
The orthodox hierarchy mimicked the practices of the
religious authorities in England and played the part of
Laud against dissentients--the jealousy and
dissatisfaction it aroused accelerated the colonization
of Rhode Island and Connecticut--but in material points
there was no similarity to the conditions which had
stimulated emigration from England. There was no
arbitrary taxation, no official corruption, no autocratic
irremovable government.
The distribution of land is an all-important factor
in the opening of a now country. The average man's
immediate interest was much more intimately affected by
the division of township territory than by the lack of a
vote for an Assistant or a Deputy.
The Massachusetts settlers came from a country of
landlords and tenants, both classes being represented in
the migration, but on the new soil everyone who took part
in the settlement of a township shared in the division
* The law of 1635 referred to on page 35 was ignored in the case of Sudbury both by the settlers and by the General Court itself. The legislature had specifically debarred non-freemen from any vote concerning the "layeing out of lotts, &c.," yet only two of the seven Sudbury men that it commissioned, September 4 1639, to "lay out lands" were freemen at that time; and, as already noted, Ward was not a freeman when he was appointed to sigh for the town.
36
POLICIES AND SUFFRAGE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS
of its lands, irrespective of his suffrage qualifications
or lack of them. The size of a family and its financial
resources, social rank, and other considerations were
influential in determining the social rank, and other
considerations were influential in determining the size
of allotments, but suffrage qualifications accorded no
preference whatever.
No great discernment required to perceive the
weakness and dangers of the theory of the church
membership restriction, but it draws more indignation
from modern writers than it did from those who lived and
toiled and hoped and built within its shadow. It was not
as a rule sensed as oppressive except by some residents
of the older towns, as Boston and the vicinity. Those in
the newer settlements had their minds and hands very full
in the established and operation of their communities.
Full suffrage was indeed a duty frequently evaded by
those eligible--to such an extent that the General Court
of 1647 passed a law with penalties for those "many
members of churches, who, to exempt ymselves from all
publik service in ye common wealth, will not come in to
be made freemen."
It seems to me that altogether too much has been
made of the early restriction of suffrage in
Massachusetts. Many of those entitled to the privilege,
did not want it; and those not entitled to it, could have
obtained it if they had made a general demand for it.
Also, a wrong perspective is attained by historians
who recite the history of Boston as that of
Massachusetts. Too much space is accorded to
controversies and their happenings in the capital. It was
to a large degree the development of the hinterland that
made Massachusetts great.
On the last of the tree points cited at the
commencement of this chapter--religious intolerance--one
finds, on the other hand, ample evidence to sustain the
modern indictment against the leaders of the first
generations. Some of them aggressively and others with
lingering unwillingness set from themselves the light
they had earlier held for freedom of religious exercise;
and for this the entire enrolled body of freemen--holding
in their power the election of governor, assistants, and
deputies, and themselves "settling" the clergy--must bear
their share of responsibility.
The intolerant spirit which animated the freemen and
clergy in 1637--the setting aside of Vane as the result
of the Anne Hutchinson religious excitement, and the
edicts of the famous Synod--was indeed representative of
the trend of Massachusetts thought. A dispute over, or
the non-acceptance of,
37
THE WILLIAM WARD GENEALOGY
a doctrinal point was a very serious matter. Local
histories tell of many community quarrels and dissensions
over ambiguous, gossamered theological tenets, and the
political happenings of the summer of 1637 prove that the
policy pursued was at the time the general wish of
Massachusetts outside of Boston.
Furthermore, though, as decades went by, the freemen
shrank to a small minority, the orthodox church party
always probably constituted an active plurality, for
dissentients presented a very wide variety of
indifference and division.
There are many other interesting sides to the
subject:
The idea of a theocracy built upon the Old Testament
was strongly held by many of the early settlers. The
manner of the colony inception favored the idea of a
proprietary community. The "principal men" believed that
the safety of the new commonwealth lay in its continuing
as much as possible under their personal control--and the
delicacy of the political connections between
Massachusetts Bay and the old country constantly excited
the fear that any schism or dissension that was not
crushed or smothered might destroy the power which they
exercised by virtue of charter, precedent, and
personality, or might develop into a cause or pretext for
royal interference, Some of the clergy were autocratic
but they had been placed in their offices by virtue if
the trust felt in them by their congregations--they were
not appointed by any King, bishop, or individual patron.
They were respected for their learning and they stood in
the forefront of the spirit of independence.
To ascribe to Massachusetts' suffrage and religious
restrictions the cessation of immigration from England is
an unreasonable stretching of the indictment. Neither
one, nor both together, would have sufficed if economic
conditions had equaled or exceeded the apparent promise
of other colonies. The majority of those who emigrated
from England were not so self-sacrificingly devoted to
religious tenants nor so accustomed to suffrage
privileges or rights. It will be remembered that
immigration was not resumed when religious restrictions
were removed.
It would, truly, have made a handsomer historical
picture if Massachusetts had from the first both accepted
and practiced the theory of religious tolerance, but
there is enough glory for her in that she held steadily
burning the light of abundant opportunity for the
development of prosperous family life. In that respect
she was infinitely in advance of the mother country,
which was instead steadily cramping her citizenry.
39
POLICIES AND SUFFRAGE IN OLD MASSACHUSETTS
William Ward's Political Views
Of this New England party of secular opportunity and
religious intolerance was William Ward. He was early
prominent among the lay members of his church, and he was
after May 1643 a fully accredited freeman. Beyond these
general facts we lack sufficient information to determine
his personal views. Massachusetts policies had set before
his arrival, and during its first decades Sudbury was
blessedly free from church disputes, its inhabitants
living together in "godly peace and unity."
A number of Ward's associates were quicker than he
in enrolling as freemen. Was he a full-fledged church
member (and therefore entitled to take the oath) prior to
1643? There is nothing to decide this. Did he become a
freeman because he wanted to be a deputy? He was elected
the following year. Or had he refrained from becoming
one, because he did not want to me a deputy or to have
other additional responsibilities?
3