BIOGRAPHY OF ELISHA WARD, SR. AND JANE WASHINGTON NEELAND submitted by: T. D. Hudson ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Elisha Ward was born on 21 February 1773 in Halifax County North Carolina, the son of David Ward and Mary Wyatt. Apparently Elisha Ward’s roots in eastern North Carolina run deep: his presumed grandfather, David Ward, Sr., and great-grandfather John Ward had lived in the northeastern North Carolina counties of Tyrell and Halifax since the 1730s and 1740s. The North Carolina colonial capitol was down at New Bern near the coast, but when the Revolutionary fervor swept through North Carolina in the early 1770s, the provisional government dedicated to independence met in the town of Halifax near the Wards’ residence. Thus, Elisha spent his early years near one of the most politically active cities in North America. In particular, the Halifax Resolves drafted in 1776 and passed by the provisional government of North Carolina was the first resolution passed by any American colony calling for independence from Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War, many residents of Virginia and the Carolinas migrated south towards Georgia, enticed by large offers of cheap land from the Georgia state government. David and Mary Ward sold their Halifax County plantation on 15 May 1785 and left the region soon afterwards. It is uncertain where they went immediately after leaving Halifax County; they could have moved to another North Carolina county for a few years, settled in South Carolina, or moved directly to Georgia. It appears they went directly to Georgia, for in 1789 a David Ward witnessed a legal transaction recorded in Wilkes County. Wilkes neighbored Washington County and was near Burke County, the region in which David Ward apparently first settled upon his arrival in Georgia. Thus, it appears that our David Ward is the man who made this 1789 record. The Georgia legislature formed Jefferson County in February 1796, and David Ward resided in Jefferson from before its creation. By 1798, David Ward was apparently in poor health, for on April 6th he gave his livestock, farming tools, carpenters tools, and household furniture to his son Elisha Ward. Presumably David died soon afterwards; Elisha’s mother Mary lived in Montgomery County Georgia after by 1807 when she drew land in the lottery, but she died about 1810. Jane Washington Neeland was born on 15 October 1784, apparently in South Carolina. It is not known how she met Elisha Ward nor precisely where or even when they married; perhaps her family moved from South Carolina into Georgia after she was born. In any case, they were married no later than about 1803, for their eldest known child John was born about 1804. On 25 January 1806 Elisha and Jane sold 200 acres of land in Jefferson County. Soon after this sale, they left Jefferson, and by 1810, had settled in Twiggs County. They remained residents of Twiggs County for the next eight years. The few records available indicate that, like the vast majority of white Southerners of his time, Elisha Ward was a middle class farmer who owned between 200 and 400 acres most of his adult life. During his young adulthood, like his father David Ward, II and grandfather David Ward, I, Elisha did not own any slaves. In 1818, he paid taxes on one slave, but by 1830, no slaves belonged to his household. In 1837, the year before his death, one adult slave couple lived with Elisha’s family. With General Andrew Jackson’s subjugation of the Creek nation at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on 27 March 1814 and the ensuing Treaty of Fort Jackson with the Creeks, the United States government succeeded in forcibly acquiring the vast region of central Alabama. Surveyed began by 1816, and in 1817, the government began the process of dispersing this region to white settlers. The land first went on the auction block in the Georgia state capitol of Milledgeville on 4 August 1817. Soon afterwards, a large group of white settlers traveled through the Creek nation territory of western Georgia and eastern Alabama along the Federal road and settled in south central Alabama, now known as northern Butler County Alabama. That winter, a small faction of renegade Indians who refused to accept the Fort Jackson Treaty began threatening the white settlers. In March 1818, incensed at the white invasion of their ancestral homeland, these renegade Indians attacked and massacred several white families. In response, the settlers began construction of Fort Dale, located several miles northwest of present-day Greenville, and many white families spent the summer inside the fort in anticipation of further attacks. However, United States troops drove the Indians out of the region by that fall, and they moved to Florida and joined the Seminoles. On 14 September 1818, while still a resident of Twiggs County Alabama, Elisha Ward purchased land situated in what became Butler County Alabama in 1820. Undoubtedly Ward knew of the Indians problems in the region, and he selected property located very near the existing settlements. The present-day northwestern city limits of Greenville, Alabama run about one mile due east of Ward’s property. It is impossible to know if he traveled to Alabama prior to purchasing his Alabama property; many Georgia citizens purchased government land in Alabama sight unseen, so there is a good chance he never saw his new farm when he bought it. Ward moved his family to Alabama Territory during the winter of 1818 – 1819, and the next spring, he purchased additional land from the government. For his second farm, Ward chose land located about two miles due north of the first, just about three miles northwest of the county seat of Greenville. In addition, another early settlement in the region, Fort Dale, lay less than two miles due east of his second Alabama property. In 1819, several merchants opened stores near Ward’s new farms in the small communities of Fort Dale and Buttsville (the original name of Greenville). Thus, after settling in Alabama, Elisha Ward lived near several small villages and the Federal Road, the primary link connecting Alabama with Georgia. The newly created Butler County Alabama held its first election to select a sheriff in August 1820, and Elisha Ward voted in that election as a citizen of the county. In 1821, the Alabama Legislature decided to make the community of Buttsville the county seat, and soon afterwards the name was changed to Greenville. On 10 March 1822, Elisha Ward purchased additional government land adjoining his existing farm in Butler County Alabama. He paid for this land with money in accounts in four different banks: the Bank of the United States, the Bank of South Carolina, the Bank of Alabama, and the Bank of Mobile. Ward made other purchases of government land in 1823 and 1825. Also in 1825, he paid off his debt to the government for the land he purchased on credit in 1818 and 1819. Elisha Ward served as a justice of the peace for Butler County for the period up to 1828, for in that year his replacement was appointed. During the 1820s, Elisha Ward’s home near Fort Dale and the county seat of Greenville lay in central Butler County. For some unknown reason, the government did not offer the extraordinarily rich bottom lands in the northern portion of the county for sale until the latter 1820s. Settlers quickly purchased and settled on this land as soon as it became available, causing a large increase in the population of northern Butler, southeastern Dallas, and western Montgomery Counties. As a result, the Alabama Legislature created Lowndes County out of this region in 1830. Elisha Ward’s Butler County plantation lay only four miles south of the Butler/Lowndes county line. Sometime in the latter 1820s, Ward apparently sold his farm near Greenville and Fort Dale and moved with many of his neighbors the short distance north into what soon became southern Lowndes County. However, Ward never purchased any Lowndes County farmland from the government; in fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that he ever owned property there. Elisha’s son David lived near him in Lowndes County in 1830. David had married Cynthia Seale about 1826; her father James Seale had settled near Fort Dale in 1821 on land adjoining Elisha’s. In 1833 David Ward purchased a forty-acre farm from the government located about seven miles northeast of Fort Deposit in southeastern Lowndes. Elisha Ward and his family became acquainted the family of John Fields Auld in the 1820s as well. Both families were Methodist, and in 1830 Elisha and Jane’s daughter Margaret Jane Ward married Elijah Michael Auld, the son of John Fields Auld. The Aulds settled nearby in south/central Lowndes in 1831. The Ward and Auld families thereafter became closely linked, and they traveled west together and intermarried. By the mid 1830s, the United States government began offering for sale other virgin lands further west in Mississippi and Louisiana, and the relentless westward drive again struck many residents of Lowndes and Butler County. John F. Auld apparently left first, for he sold his Lowndes County plantation on 15 November 1834. Sometime either that winter or else in the fall of 1835, John F. Auld and his son James moved to Kemper County Mississippi, located in east/central Mississippi on the Alabama state line. They bought adjoining farms there in November 1835. We do not know precisely when Elisha Ward left Alabama for Mississippi, but he was already making plans to do so by the end of the 1835 farming season (if not earlier). On 14 January 1836, Ward purchased government land located in Kemper County Mississippi at the Columbus, Mississippi Land Office as a resident of Kemper County. Ward chose property located less than one mile from the farms of John and James Auld. Elisha’s son David Ward and son-in-law Elijah Michael Auld both purchased tracts of land adjoining Elisha’s two months later, on March 8th. However, the few available records indicate that neither of the Wards nor Elijah M. Auld farmed their Kemper County land during the 1836 growing season. It appears that David Ward returned to Lowndes and planted his final crop there in 1836, and Elisha Ward and Elijah M. Auld either did the same or else they helped one of the other Auld men to cultivate their Kemper County farms in 1836. However, during the year 1837, both Elisha Ward and Elijah M. Auld cultivated their own farms in Kemper County. Meanwhile, apparently David Ward returned to Lowndes County Alabama for the year 1836. It appears that he never resided on the land he bought next to his father in Kemper County Mississippi. In early January 1837 he joined a large group of citizens of the region who sold their plantations in Butler and Lowndes County Alabama and moved west of the Mississippi River, settling in northern Ouachita Parish Louisiana by mid-February 1837. Elisha did not tarry long in Mississippi. Sometime in the fall or winter of 1837, Elisha Ward and the Auld sons, Elijah Michael and James A. Auld, departed Kemper, leaving only John F. Auld there. Elisha Ward and his son-in-law Elijah Auld presumably continued westward and joined David Ward in what was then northern Ouachita Parish Louisiana (this region became Union Parish in 1839). It is not certain when they arrived in Louisiana, but the only available evidence points to their arriving before the 1838 planting season. On 29 July 1838, just a short while after his arrival in north Louisiana, Elisha Ward, Sr.’s grandson Elisha Ward was born, the son of David and Cynthia Seale Ward. Merely six days later, on August 5th, Elisha Ward, Sr. died at the age of sixty-five years. He was likely buried on his son’s farm east of Farmerville. David Ward’s family graveyard soon became the community cemetery known as Ward’s Chapel, so Elisha Ward is probably the first person buried at Ward’s Chapel. Elisha’s widow Jane Washington Ward did not purchase her own farm in Union Parish, but she did maintain her own household for a while, apparently located on either David Wards or Elijah M. Auld’s plantations several miles east of Farmerville. Other than a lawsuit she filed in 1841 to collect a debt owed to her, Jane Washington Neeland Ward left no records in Union Parish. She was living with David Ward in 1850, the last known record of her. She apparently died between 1850 and 1860, presumably in Union Parish. ########################## SOURCES: I wrote the above biography based upon my own personal research into the Elisha Ward, Sr. family plus information shared with me by Mark Ward. Sources include family Bible records, census data, records of the United States, Jefferson Co GA, Lowndes Co AL, Union Par LA. T. D. Hudson