The Property History

Dr. Edward Hiram Ward (August 1829 – June 1896) was the son of Hiram Ward (1794 – 1842) and Sara Hackney (1806 – 1848) and lived in Chatham County, North Carolina.

The first Edward Ward, settler, was a landowner and sailed from London to America and settled in Pitt County in 1704. He was the grandson of Sir Edward Ward, a London judge, who presided at the trial of pirate William Kidd, and sentenced him to be hanged on Tryburn Wall in London.

Early records show the Ward name in New England and others in the Roanoke Valley in Virginia.

According to family tradition, Dr. E. H. Ward came to Chatham County to establish his medical practice about 1850. Upon arriving in Chatham County, Ward settled into a two-room log cabin on the banks of Ward’s Creek, near the present site of his farm complex. This site was only a short distance from Hackney’s Crossroads, which was located approximately one mile south of the present site of the Ward Farm Complex, on what is now SR 1700. A large farm, post office, and general store, located at Hackney’s Crossroads, in 1850, probably induced Dr. Ward to settle nearby.

Although family tradition provides the only information about Ward’s background as a physician, his training and practice was probably similar to other rural North Carolina doctors during the middle of the nineteenth century. Ward was born in 1829, perhaps in Orange County. Prior to 1850 there were at least fifteen medical apprenticeship schools in North Carolina where Ward could have begun his medical training. Two of these were located in the piedmont region, close to Orange and Chatham Counties, and Ward may have attended one of these. Family tradition states that at some point during his career, Ward studied at John Hopkins University. It is not possible to confirm this tradition, but North Carolina physicians and medical students did attend out of state medical schools. In 1840 eighty-seven North Carolinians were studying medicine in other states.

A few years after his arrival in Chatham County, Dr. Ward established a small farmstead. He may have done this to supplement his income as a rural physician, many of whom only realized about $300 a year in income. Ward, according to family tradition, purchased the land, where the farm complex is now located, just before the Civil War and moved his two-room cabin there.

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