The Property History

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The Civil War only briefly interrupted Ward’s career as a physician and small farmer. He enlisted in March of 1862 as the Captain of Company B, Forty-Ninth North Carolina Regiment. This company was formed with men from the area of Jones’ Grove on the east side of the Haw River between Bynum and Chapel Hill. Ward, the company’s first commander, resigned soon after assuming command. Ward’s reason for resigning is unknown, but family tradition speculates that he may have hired a conscript to take his place.

Following the Civil War, Dr. Ward continued his medical practice as well as his farming activities. The combination of a medical practice and farming operation was not uncommon in rural North Carolina. Ward married Savannah Horton during the mid 1860s and fathered his first of eight children at the age of thirty-eight in 1867.

During the late 1860s or early 1870s, as his family began to grow, Ward probably began to expand and remodel his older log home. The cabin was covered with wooden weatherboards and a similar one-story weatherboard section was added to the front of the older section. Ward also probably constructed the one-story office structure in the late 1860s or early 1870s to give himself more privacy in the practice of his profession.

Evidently Dr. Ward’s farming operations and medical practice were successful, for by the time Ward was fifty years of age, in 1880, he had amassed an estate that was larger than most of his Chatham County neighbors. In 1880, when the average farm in North Carolina contained only 142 acres, Ward owned 230 acres of land valued at $1,200. Including his other property, Ward’s total estate was valued at $1,732 in 1880. At a time when the size of many farms in the state was decreasing, Ward was expanding his land holdings. By the time of his death in 1896, when the average North Carolina farm contained only 142 acres, Ward’s estate contained 344 acres.

Following Ward’s death, several of his sons and daughters occupied the farm’s main house. His only daughter, Jenneverette, occupied the house for some time and then one of Ward’s seven sons rented the house from Ward’s estate. It was during this period in the early twentieth century that the rear well and some of the outbuildings were probably added. The son, J. B. Ward later purchased the house from the estate and raised his family there. His daughter, Mrs. C. R. Brown, became the final Ward descendant to own and occupy the property.

On July 5, 1985 the Dr. E. H. Ward Farm was registered on The National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

Additional Historical Notes

It is believed that Dr. Ward died from pneumonia, possibly riding in the snow or cold rain on one of his many house calls. Since there were no antibiotics in his day, one’s own body defenses were the only hope of surviving. He died at the age of 65 and was buried next to the Mt. Gilead Baptist Church in Chatham County with his wife, Savannah Catherine Horton and several of his children and grandchildren.

Family tradition states that Dr. Ward had saddlebags with obstetrical forceps on one side and surgical (appendectomy) instruments on the other side. He would leave home on horseback and would be gone for days going from house to house where he was needed by his patients.

One page of Dr. Ward’s ledger noted:

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