Wilson Mirror, 6 November 1889.
Algie Vaughan’s stepdaughter was Sarah Ward, who was about 15 in 1889. Sarah’s mother Mittie Ward had two children before she married Vaughan in 1879, Sarah and Joseph H. Ward. This terrible incident may explain why Mittie reverted to her maiden name.
Indianapolis News, 18 September 1908.
Dr. Joseph H. Ward elected as the first president of the newly organized association of Indiana Negro Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists.
While Americans fought in Europe, a war with influenza raged at home.
Indianapolis News, 19 October 1918.
Dr. Joseph H. Ward returned to Indianapolis eight months later to find his wife Zella and daughter Mary Roena recovered, but his beloved son gone. The boy was nine years old.
——
Coda
My grandmother Mary Ward Roberts, whom we called Mur, would cry remembering when Buddy was taken away. She and her mother couldn’t follow the hearse because they were still sick. The purple cloth they put outside of the door to let people know that the house was infected with Spanish Influenza. Mur said that Buddy pointed his finger upward and said goodbye. Her father went into a deep depression in France and was hospitalized. When he returned from France, he had Buddy’s body exhumed to say a final farewell. Can you imagine? — Z.P., great-granddaughter of Joseph H. Ward
And with that introductory email began my fruitful and thoroughly enjoyable correspondence with B.H., my third cousin, twice removed. Our common ancestor was Levisa (or Eliza) Hagans Seaberry, mother of Napoleon Hagans (B.H.’s great-grandfather) and Frances Seaberry Artis (my great-great-great-grandmother). In the spring of 2010, B.H. and I entered into a mutually beneficial exchange of information about our shared family. I had little information about Napoleon beyond what I’d found in census records and deeds, I’d lost track of his sons Henry and William, and I was completely unaware of his son, the accomplished Dr. Joseph H. Ward. He cued me into William S. Hagans‘ post-migration life in Philadelphia, shared amazing photographs and documents, and lead me to “discover” Joseph Ward’s early years. In turn, I introduced B.H. to Wayne and Wilson Counties and the lives of the Haganses, Wards and Burnetts before they recreated themselves up North.
This past weekend, I traveled to Detroit for — astonishingly — the first time ever. Our primary purpose was to take in the city’s rich street art culture, but I added an item to the top of the agenda — meeting B.H. Friday night, he and his wife treated us to dinner at an old and storied restaurant near the city’s Eastern Market, and Levisa’s children came full circle.
Iconic photograph of Major (later Colonel) Joseph H. Ward during his World War I service, from Emmett J. Scott’s The American Negro in the World War (1919).
Journal of the National Medical Association, volume 21, April-June 1929.
Though it’s hard to imagine a more resounding endorsement than one emanating from Dr. W.E.B. DuBois (himself a winner), the NAACP’s 1933 Spingarn Medal in fact went to YMCA secretary Max Yergan for his missionary work in South Africa.
[For a earlier bit of correspondence from Dr. DuBois to the Wards, see here.]
Hat tip to cousin A.W.P., Dr. Joseph H. Ward‘s granddaughter, who alerted me to this document.
Indiana Medical Journal, volume 21, July 1902.
Special thanks to cousin A.W.P., granddaughter of Dr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Ward, for bringing this to my attention:
Yes.
Wilson Advance, 22 August 1889.
The Civil War set Dr. David G.W. Ward back, but not for long. When he died in 1887, he stood possessed of more than 1900 acres in Wilson and Greene Counties.
[As an aside, Ward’s administrator, Frederick A. Woodard, was elected Democratic Congressman to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1892. He lost his bid for re-election to George H. White, a visionary African-American who was the last black Southerner elected to Congress until the post-Civil Rights era. I attended a middle school named for Woodard.]
[As another aside — literally — I think it’s safe to say that Sarah Ward’s children received nothing from the doctor’s estate.]
Pretty excited about this:
On Tuesday October 28 a local genealogy phenom (although she is now a lawyer in Atlanta) will present her findings on Dr. Joseph H. Ward, an African American doctor who was born in Wilson in 1870. Although he began his life in Wilson, a place that at the time had few prospects for an African Americans, by the 1890’s he was in Indianapolis practicing medicine as a licensed physician. Come and listen to Lisa tell how she untangled the complicated history of his life and family.
In the mean time get absorbed in her brilliant blog about the history and genealogy of the free and enslaved persons of color in North Carolina, Scuffalong: Genealogy
In which we learn that “among the many enterprises which have come into life in this community, and which are doing as much so much to uplift the race, by giving employment to Colored youth; and by establishing ideals to which they may attain, none has been of better purpose than that recent established in our midst by our fellow-townsman, Dr. J.H. Ward.”
The Recorder, Indianapolis, 7 August 1909.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 