Joseph Ward of Dakota

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGK

I. Parentage and Boyhood 3

II. School Days — Teaching at WellsviLLE, N. Y. — Pioneering in Illinois 19

Chapter I Parentage And Boyhood Chapter I Parentage And Boyhood

JOSEPH WARD was a Pilgrim of the later day. One could hardly choose a better example of the influence of the New England Pilgrim spirit in the development of the nation than his life and work. His forefathers were of pure New England stock, and the history of the family line, in successive migrations westward, is a record of civilizing power. The first of them, that William Ward who settled at Sudbury, Massachusetts, before 1637, and moved afterwards to Marlboro, farther into the wilderness, was representative in the General Court of the colony, chairman of the selectmen of his town, and deacon of the Marlboro church at its organization. A great grandson of this first William was General Artemus Ward, first commander-in-chief of the Massachusetts forces in the Revolutionary War. In the direct line of Joseph Ward's descent was Jemima Allen, cousin of Col. Ethan Allen, of Vermont. In the successive communities where his forefathers dwelt — at Sudbury, at Marlboro, at New Marlboro on the western slope of the Berkshire^, and finally at Perry Centre in the "Genessee Country" of Western New York, where Joseph Ward was born

— the Wards were invariably people of consequence. They form a noble succession of strong men — representatives, magistrates, builders of settlements, defenders of liberty, founders of churches and schools. Their record is a type of the victorious progress of Pilgrim civilization from the Atlantic shore westward across the land. And Joseph Ward in his own character and life work, as missionary pastor, educator, and statesman, was true to that noble inheritance. He was alive to this historic signiflcauce of his own work in Dakota, and it was an element of his strength. Had he written himself the history of his life, he would have laid emphasis upon his family line, and his inheritance of the spirit and ideals of the Pilgrims.

Dr. Jabez Ward, the father of Joseph, emigrated with others of his kindred from New Marlboro, Massachusetts, to the new "Genessee Country" in Western New York in 1813, settling at a place called Perry Centre. There Joseph Ward was born. May 5, 1838. Soon after the Wards settled at Perry Centre, the Sheldons, who had been neighbors of theirs in New Marlboro and were already connected with the family by marriage, came also, and other New England families. In fact the whole earlier movement into that newly-opened land of promise was composed mostly of settlers from Connecticut and Massachusetts, the region being more accessible to them than to others, lying due west across the Hudson, and up the valley of the Mohawk. So the community at Perry Centre, like many another in the "Genessee

PAEENTAGE AND BOYHOOD

Country," was begun and continued in the faith and manners of the old New England home. They were a people of simple, industrious life, possessed of the patience, the energy, and the thrift to wrest from the wilderness, with ox-teams and primitive farming and with markets far away, a livelihood and increasing competence. Theirs was a life of plain living and high thinking. The toil and privation of pioneering life bred no dullness or coarseness in minds like theirs. Fine ideals of moral and religious culture, a spirit of independent thinking, and an inquisitive, eager, and aspiring frame of mind were to be found in almost every home. Theological controversies were common in those days, and the knotty problems of election and predestination, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the divinity of Christ were familiar matter in sermons, in Sunday School teaching, and in contributions to the weekly newspapers; and the discussion of such questions formed the table-talk in many a household of the community. That kind of thinking, lifeless and impractical as it may seem to-day, was the nourishment which produced the strong minds and great souls of the days gone by.

Joseph Ward's sister Sarah, who has written an account of the theology of the Perry Centre community, tells also of how carefully the usages of their former New England home were maintained. "Some of these customs," she declares, "the strict ^keeping' of Saturday night as the beginning of holy time, the nightly ringing of the curfew, the tolling of the bell on the death of any one in the parish — all these were more punctiliously observed than in many a Massachusetts town." Above all, they "loved and frequented the house of God." The little company of pioneers at Perry Centre founded a church the year after their coming, and Ralph Ward, the grandfather, and Jabez Ward, the father of Joseph were original members of it. Jabez Ward was deacon of that church from its beginning in 1814 until his death in 1842. Churchgoing was serious business in those days. They tell of the services being held at first in the log homes of the settlers, then in Deacon Howard's barn, and after that for a time in the Taylor schoolhouse west of the Centre, and of how Deacon Sheldon, in the struggling days when the church had no "stated supply," would read one of Dr. Emmons' strong Calvanistic sermons. They tell how families, including all the children down to the babe in arms, in all weathers, "drawn to church by ox-team, came to stay all day, bringing with them hay for their oxen and dinner for themselves. They had service in the forenoon and in the afternoon, with Sunday School in between." Prizes were given in Sunday School for committing to memory the gTeatest number of verses from the Bible, and for a child to recite the whole book of Matthew, it seems, was none too much for the winning of the prize.

Joseph Ward's father. Dr. Jabez Ward, was a marked character of the community, and he figures largely in the reminiscences of old timers of Perry Centre. He was the "beloved physician" of

PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD

the settlement, and a godly man, who ministered to the souls as well as the bodies of his patients. Before coming West he had been licensed to practice by the Connecticut Medical Society, and "approved relative to his knowledge of physic and surgery." The profession of doctor in a country community in those days was no sinecure. Dr. Ward's old faded account book reveals a life of painstaking toil for very meagre returns. After the manner of country doctors he not only prescribed for his patients, but supplied them with medicines laboriously prepared according to old-fashioned pharmacy. These he dispensed at trifling charges. The doctor's fee for ushering a child into the world was three dollars, and the service would frequently involve a journey of twenty miles on horseback at night and in the storm. The settlement of accounts would often be by a cheese, or a quarter of beef, or a load of hay. In his longyears of busy practice he never accumulated much earthly treasure. It is recorded that "his views of the sanctity of the Sabbath were such that if he made charges for professional visits on that day, the avails were cast into the treasury of the Lord."

The Perry Centre people were always devoted to the cause of temperance, and Dr. Ward was the chief promoter of a temperance society at that place, which held regular meetings and discussions. A copy is preserved of one of his temperance addresses, which reflects somewhat the pomp and circumstance of old time oratory, yet reveals the force of great earnestness; the Scriptures are his perpetual source of example and metaphor. While Dr. Ward's mind was chiefly practical, and the temperance cause appealed to him on this ground, he was a thinker in theology also, and discoursed and wrote much upon the theological questions of the day. His position was doubtless as orthodox as that of any other pillar of the church; yet he seems to have been a man of more than usual tolerance in such matters. One of the early schoolmasters of the place, who had fallen somewhat under the ban of the church for liberal views in theology and other subjects, turned to Dr. Ward in his trouble and received his friendship and support. The young man proved to be worthy of confidence; soon after he founded a private academy at Perry Centre, where he taught successfully for many years, and in all recollections of the old times his character and ability are held in high esteem.

A pleasant picture of the good Dr. Ward is given by one of the old Perry Centre boys. Dr. E. A. Sheldon, President of the State Normal School at Oswego, N. Y., in a reminiscence, written long after, of the old home church and community.

"Among those (pillars of the church) who made a strong impression on my young life was Dr. Jabez Ward, one of the original organizers of the church. He was our family physician, as he was of nearly all the families in town. He was a man of marked and rare traits of character. He may be justly termed a unique man. His duplicate it would be hard to find. He was a cheerful, and we might almost say a jolly man. His best remedies

PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD

for the sick were not to be found in his saddle bags. I cannot say that I ever enjoyed the latter, with its unswallowable pills and picra, but I was willing to endure them for the sake of the visit from one whose presence was such pleasant and wholesome medicine for the soul and body. He cut an odd figure on his old horse as he threw his arms up and down and his heels out and in, as if in frantic effort to wake an animal that appeared to be in a jogging slumber. I am sure that both horse and rider took many naps on the road. So thoroughly was the horse habituated to a certain gait, that any ordinary nap would not in the least interfere with his measured step. The rider often fell from his horse in his sleep, but he was too much of a philosopher ever to be hurt by such falls. He didn't trust to saddle girths. He always went to the ground like a bag of sand and his saddle with him, with no harm to wind or limb. The only harm that ever followed was the trouble of throwing on the saddle and leading the horse to the fence and mounting. His happy repartees made him an agreeable companion to old and young. He was a man of strong affections and deep religious feeling, and his influence for good was felt in every home he visited, as well as in the church which he ever served as an officer."

The story that is told in connection with the last illness of Dr. Ward is characteristic of his whole life of service and sacrifice. He was seized with pneumonia, perhaps the result of exposure on some errand of mercy, and lay upon his sick bed in serious condition. Two young men of the

d neighborhood were sitting up with him at night, and as the hours dragged on they fell asleep, and slept so well that they did not hear a knock at the door. The sick physician arose and went to answer the knock. It was a messenger for the doctor, some patient of his a mile or so away. The case was urgent; the family were unwilling to risk the new and untried practitioner who had recently come; they wanted "the old doctor" whom they knew. Perhaps Jabez Ward did not appreciate his own danger; at all events the lifelong habit of ready service and the impulse of compassion were strong within him. He left the house, his own watchers still sleeping, attended the case with skill and success (another new child), and returned, the watchers still undisturbed, to his own bed. When they awoke with the morning light their patient was worse. His malady, doubtless aggravated by his midnight escapade, ran a speedy course, and within two days he died.

When this event occurred the boy Joseph was only five years old. In after years he came to feel that it had been a great loss to him not to know more of that father. There were three other children in the family: his older sister, Sarah, who became the wife of the Rev. Stewart Sheldon and the mother of the Rev. Dr. Charles M. Sheldon; an older brother, Butler, who became a prominent banker at Le Roy, not far away; and a younger brother, Cullen, who died early.

The widowed mother had been already for three years a helpless invalid, and so continued until released by death nine years later. She was a

PAKENTAGE AND BOYHOOD

woman of rare character. Her maiden name was Aurilla Tufts. Her ancestors on both sides had been "driven by religious persecutions from Scotland to the North of Ireland, coming from there to New England at an early date." Her family had come from Vermont to the "Genessee Country," settling finally at Perry Centre. It was under the very beautiful influence of this mother that Joseph Ward's character was developed up to his fifteenth year. The very habit of his daily attention to the comfort of the invalid, and of watching over her life of pain and increasing helplessness, bred in him a tenderness and gentleness like a woman's, and thoughtfulness beyond his years. The mother's disease was incurable (heart trouble), and as the weeks and months passed by her lease of life was always precarious. The sense of that perpetual shadow of death, with the solemn thought of the other world so continually near that bedside, must have wrought a deep impression on the mind of the boy. It is not unlikely that the singular experience of these years had much to do with establishing in him that feeling of immortality, always so vivid and clear, which was one of his marked traits.

Sister Sarah, upon whom fell chief responsibility for the care of the mother and the younger children during those years, has told of the companionship between mother and son, and of Joseph's early reading and education under his mother's direction.

"Warm-hearted and affectionate, he became at once," she says, "the most loving and dell voted companion of the sweet and patient invalid, and he was never more happy than when allowed to render her some little service. The bond of sympathy between them was very strong and her wishes were his law. It was very beautiful to see how perfect was the obedience he rendered her, so that to do anything without her permission was almost never thought of. During all those years, until the little boy of five became a lad of fourteen, only one act of disobedience is recalled, and this committed under great temptation, and repented of almost in the doing. Yet so conscientious was the child that he could not rest till he had come with penitent tears to his mother's bedside and accepted the penalty of his wrongdoing.

"It was a very rare degree of wisdom," Sarah continues, "that was given to this mother in her time of need, and her weakness of body only served to quicken her intellectual and spiritual faculties. All household affairs were discussed in 'mother's room,' and all plans for work and play were brought to her for approval. Much of Joseph's reading was done as he sat by her bedside, ready at any moment to drop his book and give the mother needed attention."

This reading, as Sister Sarah has described it, was sufficient in quantity, and supreme in quality — although the world of those days never dreamed of such a flood of juvenile literature as is offered to the boys and girls of our time. Children of that day, having fewer books, read the same one many times, and the spirit of literature certainly thrived in the generations so nourished. Bible reading parelntage and boyhood

and a great deal of it went without saying in every Puritan household. But the Ward's possessed a modest library at home, and there was access to the circulating library of the district school, "well supplied," Sarah relates, "with standard works, solid and substantial. The department of fiction contained 'Robinson Crusoe,' and 'Swiss Family Robinson,' with possibly one or two other volumes of lesser interest and value, but these were first in point of attraction, and they were read and reread as often as they could be caught hold of in their circulating rounds. Josephus' 'History,' taken from this library, was read by Joseph before he was eight years old; and Milton's 'Paradise Lost' and Rollins' 'Histories' he had devoured at that early period. The word 'devoured' is used advisedly, for it was in just this way that he disposed of the mental food that came within his reach. And in remarkable degree, with him, to read a book was to know and remember it. It was in large part this ability to appropriate and retain what he read that gave him in later years so accurate a knowledge of widely different subjects."

In all this period of the boy's awakening intellect the influence of the mother was fine and stimulating. Her own mind had received no great advantages of school training, yet she had inherited and acquired a sweet refinement of thought and manner and an appreciation of poetry, which represents the beauty which was by no means absent at any time from good Puritan homes. She was known in her day for a distinct

"literar^^ turn." She loved to commit her thoughts to paper, whether in letters, or diaries, or, occasionally, in verses done with quaint propriety and taste, and revealing the pure and saintly spirit that was hers. It is said that her letters "read like sermons," and were "full of piet}^" Shortly before her death she made a gift of a purse to her eldest son, Butler, accompanied by the following note of advice, which the family has treasured ever since:

"My dear Son, —

"On presenting you this purse I have two requests to make: first, that you never put into it the avails of dishonest gain; secondly, that you never draw from its resources less or more to expend upon an object which the Word of God and your own conscience cannot approve. Remember you are a steward, and for whatever of this world's goods are entrusted to your care you will soon be called to account. That the blessing of God may rest upon you is the prayer of "Your affectionate Mother,

His boyhood training, and especially the influence of his mother, was the foundation of that unaffected refinement and good breeding which made Joseph Ward an agreeable guest in the best of companies, and recognized always as a true gentleman. The saying is preserved of a certain teamster, who used to drive his regular trip through Perry Centre, and was subject to persecution by numerous youngsters along his route.

PAEENTAGE AND BOYHOOD

To the wholesale anathema which he pronounced upon all such, Butler and Joseph Ward were shining exceptions. He "never had no sass from Widow Ward's boys," he said.

There is not lacking Joseph Ward's own testimony as to the exceptional character of his boyhood environment, and what it meant to his after life. "I think of that old home church," he writes, "as one of the most remarkable churches in our country. I got my theology long before I knew there was such a thing as a theological seminary, from my mother first, then from Deacon Howard and Mrs. Skinner in the Sabbath School, then from those who used to come to our house during the interval between the morning and the afternoon services — the two Sheldons, Horace and Eleazer; the Butlers, and others. Then the work done by the same men and women in the Academy and other lines of education is coming to the surface all the time in my work in school and college in South Dakota. . . . I do not know how much I owe to that church and home, for it is a constant revelation to me as I am all the time drawling on that early experience. As long as I live I shall look back there and say it was in Perry Centre that I got all my education that was most helpful."

Dr. Edward Sheldon, already quoted, likewise expressing his appreciation of the Perry Centre of his boyhood, writes : "The Perry Centre church and community have always seemed to me phenomenal. I remember never to have seen there a drunken man, rarely an idle or a shiftless man, or even a profane man or Sabbath-breaker. I have certainly never known a more intelligent and exemplary people."

In such surroundings, where church, and community spirit, and home circumstances all combined to impress the mind of the growing boy with thoughts of duty, and solemn faith, and of the eternities always near, there nevertheless sprang up in him most richly the qualities proper to youth and a pleasant world. The sense of humor, in which he was always delightful, had been bom in him and was a marked trait of those years. He was particularly companionable and made friends easily. "A hale fellow, well met," he is declared to have been. The love of poetry, nurtured at his mother's bedside, was an abiding resource throughout his life, the great Milton of his earliest devotion retaining the allegiance of his mature years. As a man he was a genuine lover of nature, and in the days of his youth at Perry Centre could not have been insensible to the charm of the scenes which surrounded him. For this was no rocky wilderness, like the home of the first Pilgrims, but a pleasant region of meadows, orchards, and woods. From Joseph's chamber in the old home at "the Centre" he could look eastward across the gentle slope of the beautiful Genessee valley stretching away for twenty-five miles to the blue hills on the opposite side. That lovely, broad, and inspiring view would be the most familiar daily sight to any one living in the vicinity of Perry Centre, or along the road northward to Leroy.

Chapter II School Days— Teaching At Wells

VILLE, N. Y.— PIONEEEING

IN ILLINOIS i

CHAPTER II

SCHOOL DAYS— TEACHING AT WELLS- VILLE, N. Y.— PIONEERING IN ILLINOIS

THE education of the children in such a community as Perry Centre, even from the Pf,,^^ earliest pioneering days, would be most faithfully provided for. Dr. Jabez Ward was himself a school officer of the district, and at all times was zealous in the interests of education for the community. Of Joseph's reading at home, and of the intellectual influence of his mother, some account has already been given. His regular training in the home schools was doubtless of sound quality. Yet his attendance at school was somewhat irregular, owing to the fact that he was rather delicate as a child, and it was often thought best to keep him out of doors instead of in the school room. Apart from the precocity of his home reading, and the remarkable strength of his memory, there was nothing unusual about the growth of his mind, and he himself regarded it as rather slow.

It was at the district school, a mile or so from his home, that Joseph had most of his training up to the time he was fifteen years old. But there was also at Perry Centre an "institute," or academy, privately conducted, and patronized by the principal families of the community, where more advanced training was afforded, equivalent to the beginning of a high school course at the present time. Such academies were common in those days, especially in communities of New England people: there was one also at the neighboring village of Leroy, which Joseph attended part of one year, and a school also of advanced character at Perry Village a few miles from "The Centre." The boy enjoyed the best of these advantages of schooling, even after the old home was broken up by the death of his mother. His uncle, Phicol M. Ward — "Uncle Munro" — who lived near by, took Joseph into his family, administered for him and the other children the slender estate of the mother, and out of his own means aided Joseph for a number of years as he pursued hi§ education. The young man worked for his uncle and for neighboring farmers during vacations and at odd times, earning what he could himself for carrying on his schooling. He received help also from time to time from his brother, Butler, who had soon established himself in business and was master of some income. This generosity on the part of the family was a mark of their recognition of promise in the youth, and the outcome proved that they invested wisely.

The clearest impression of Joseph Ward in these school days is gained from a letter from Mr. E. D. C. McKay, one of the schoolmasters at Perry Centre, written long afterward to Mrs. Ward. Mc- Kay was the teacher who gave the young man his

SCHOOL DAYS

first impulse toward a college education, and Joseph Ward always spoke of him with high appreciation. The letter is as follows:

"Thirty years ago, when I, a boy of seventeen, was teaching the district school in the old 'White School House' a mile east of Perry Centre, New York, Joseph Ward was a jjupil there, walking a mile and a half daily to school. The next winter he attended a school that I taught at Perry Centre.* Considered altogether, his intellectual make-up, his tone and elevation of character and breadth and soundness of judgment, he was the strongest and most promising young man I ever met. In the long stretch of years since then, among all the young men — some thousands — I have observed in college and elsewhere, reckoning him on the broadest and clearest lines that point to high usefulness and value as a man, I certainly have known very few who would rank with him. I suppose his career attests the correctness of my early and permanent estimate of him. I labored hard and often with him to overcome his doubts as to taking a college course, and he touched me deeply some years since when he told me that to 'Uncle Sam' of Phillips Academy, and to me he was more indebted for what he was than to all others put together. I can see that I influenced him considerably in many ways, and in the matter of a college course, but what he was and what he became was in him. I always felt sure that he must have had a rare father and mother. I have written of him as I knew him in

♦The Institute above referred to.

his youth and young manhood. No one who ever saw him for a moment could well fail to be impressed as I was."

During these terms at Perry Centre Institute, at Leroy, and at Perry Village school, he secured a groundwork in History, Latin, and Mathematics, together with some start in German. Latin was always a favorite study with him, and he developed eventually into something of a Latin scholar. Mathematics were less to his liking, and the problems were tough discipline for his will. In debating society at the Perry school he once argued for the affirmative of the question, "Resolved: that a classical education is more beneficial than a mathematical." From references in his letters and diaries to great toil and distress over his mathematics it may be inferred that he upheld his case in this debate with much fervor. Now and then from his slender purse he purchased books for general reading, among them about this time a copy of the works of Shakespeare, which he read with great delight. Shakespeare, and in fact English literature in general, had scarcely any place in the secondary school curriculum of those days. Perhaps the study of the works of Shakespeare, as being stage plays, would even have been frowned upon in a strict Puritan community like Perry Centre. At all events, it seems that the same liberal-minded early school master of the place, of whom mention has already been made,* felt moved to write a "treatise on rhetorical instruction, and in it

SCHOOL DAYS

take occasion to vindicate such authors as Shakespeare and other dramatic writers." This excellent project was not carried out, however, for he presently made the discovery that Dr. Johnson and Coleridge had already written in defense of Shakespeare and the dramatists, and in a more able manner than he could hope to do it, and therefore concluded that "the best way henceforth would be to refer those who are disposed to cavil on the subject of the drama to those and other great and good men who have written in its favor."

So the boy Joseph read the plays of Shakespeare, whether encountering "cavil" it is not recorded, but the fact is a good sign. He had the strength of the Puritan nature without its severity. His soul was open to the "humanities" always; and the deep springs of human nature, and beauty, and imagination, and humor, continued fresh and unspoiled in him throughout manhood's work.