Obituary of James Thomas WARD, 1897: Montgomery County, MD Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Diane Bender, ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net *********************************************************************** WARD, James Thomas (b 21 Aug 1820 in Georgetown, Washington, DC, d 11 Mar 1897 Westminster, Carroll Co., MD), son of Ulysses Ward and Susan Verlinda Beall of Washington, DC and Prince George's County, MD. NORMENT * WARD * BEALL: http://www.genealogy.com/users/b/e/n/Diane-Bender/ WARD: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=dqbender Obituary from "Minutes of the Sixty-Ninth Session of the Methodist Annual Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, 1897." Report of the Maryland Annual Conference, p 81-82. Source: McDaniel College, Westminster, MD. Typed by Diane Bender, POB 178, Washington Grove MD 20880, 301-948-0133, exeline@erols.com REV. JAMES THOMAS WARD, D. D. Exist! Sorrowful word, very sorrowful to a multitude of surviving admirers and friends. Enter! Blissful word to admirers and friends on the other shore. Heavenly reunions there, but sad separations here, when this brother, beloved, passed off the earthly stage of more than half a century's philanthropic and Christian activities. And the spectators of his beneficent career, with tenderly pulsing hearts of recollections, now stand lingering with tearful gaze on the scene of his touching farewell and final departure. If large acquaintance and close association can qualify us who subscribe to this memorial for a just estimate, we have this qualification. Doctor Ward was the Conference class-mate of one of us fifty-six years ago; took a place by his side only one year later; another was again and again his parishioner in the early and in the later church life of both; another was a college student under his presidency; and another his townsman for thirty years, his associate trustee from the foundation of Western Maryland College, and through all these years had ample opportunity by official intercourse, by social and church minglings, and by contrast observations to know him well. It was not difficult to read him thoroughly. He was frank, open as the day, transparent. A sincere lover of God and of men, he had nothing to prompt concealment from either. What he seemed to be, that he was; artless, unaffected, sincere, affectionate, devout and true as steel to everything that commended itself to his intelligence as right and good. From our various and intimate relations to him we surely may speak with confidence of our ascended brother, our friend; and at the same time the friend, indeed, of every man, and well-entitled, also, with patriarchal Abraham, to be called "the friend of God." Doctor Ward! The enunciation of this name, while awaking tenderest memories in his life associates and nearest circle, commands attention and interest throughout the Methodist Protestant Church, in which for many years his royal gifts of mind and heart made him a conspicuous figure. And to weave a crowning chaplet for his character it may be truly said his name has culmination of attention, interest and respect in Westminster, where, as citizen, educator and preacher, he was admiringly read of the entire community for a quarter of a century and more. In this case, clearly contrary to the ancient proverb, the prophet had honor in his own country. In confirmation, as well qualified in the premises, the following is from the member of the committee of that locality: "While Doctor Ward was a guileless as a child, he was at the same time a splendid type of the sturdiest Christian manhood. His religious convictions were so clear and so well assured that nothing could shake the foundation upon which he stood. Gentleness of spirit and firmness of conviction and purpose were beautifully blended in his life. The impression which he made upon this community is truly wonderful. No man who ever lived here has by his personal life given such a moral and religious uplift to the community. All the religious denominations of the town, without a single exception, testify in the warmest expressions to this fact. The real power of his life was in his goodness. He was a man of culture - broad culture. Few men surpassed him in mental endowment and equipment; but it was his great sympathetic heart by which he touched men, and it is this heart-touch which embalms his memory so preciously in the affections of all who knew him." There is something in the laws of heredity - often much. James Thomas Ward was well born. His parents were among the excellent of the earth. His father, Rev. Ulysses Ward, an unstationed minister of the early Methodist Protestant Church, a prosperous man of business and of reputable social standing in Washington city - a man likewise benevolent and philanthropic. The moral resemblance between him and his son was striking. Every impulse of the latter, as all know who knew him, was kindness and charity. To the full extent of his ability, if not beyond it, his was an open hand to every good cause. Much of his patrimony as well as of his own earnings was thus dispensed to the church and the community. Converted in his thirteenth year, he promptly united with the church of his father and mother, and the church through whose instrumentality he had been brought to Christ, and thus the sun of his nobler life having had its rising, steadily moved upward, shining more and more luminously unto the perfect day of his divinely appointed subsequent life. The whole of these added years, exceeding half a century, was fully consecrated to God and the best interests of his fellow-men. Realizing that to preach the Gospel was his mission in the world, he passed out of a home of affluence and entered the itinerant ranks of the Methodist Protestant Church, a church at that time scarcely advanced beyond its infancy, an ecclesiastic experiment in Methodism, with only a few church buildings, no parsonages, poor, with nothing to attract in all it had except a pure Gospel under the auspices of American and Scriptural ideas of government. Such was the church choice, for a long life, as it proved to be, of James Thomas Ward, and he came out of that elegant city home and went forth contentedly and gladly to preach, amid the hardships of itinerant life, a religion which was such a joy to himself. Nor did he preach in vain, as Pipe Creek, Williamsport, Cumberland, Philadelphia, Alexandria, Liberty and Washington can testify. Later his good life had appropriate and beautiful rounding in preparing young men and maidens for useful careers in the world, many of the former going forth into the sacred ministry which had been for so many years his own loved employ. That was the cap sheaf of his reach harvesting for God and humanity. Could Christian zeal, purpose, ambition, if you will, have had a loftier, purer aim? Could there have been to the devotement of human energy a higher mark, or a grander consummation? As suggested by another member of the committee, a former student under Doctor Ward's college presidency, "Doctor Ward's name and memory will, of course, always be connected with the founding and progress of Western Maryland College, and however great this institution may become, it will always be remembered that he gave his life for it and to it." He also gave his loving interest to all his students, and they paid him back with full measure of reverence and affection, and to-day, as it is always has been, to his students wherever scattered, whether engaged in religious or secular pursuits, and to the families which they represent as well, the name of Doctor Ward is "as ointment poured forth." Doctor Ward as a preacher was strictly orthodox. An intense Bible student and fully competent to understand the revealed Word of God, he was of the class of pulpit men who, under God, convert souls from the error of their way and bring them into the kingdom of grace. He was higher than the "highest critics," so called, because his work was the highest of all in the saving interpretation of the merciful scheme of human salvation. In the pulpit his style was plain, practical and intensely earnest. He did not aspire to the masterful away of the pulpit orator. The auditors of Cicero, it is said, rapturously exclaimed, "How eloquent he is!" while those who heard Demosthenes cried out, with flushed faces and burning indignation, "Let us go and fight Philip!" With Demosthean, rather than with Ciceronian effect, Doctor Ward's hearers paid him the highest of all tributes to a preacher of the Gospel by being prompted to immediate action for a nobler life. And yet, while plain and simple in preaching, there was such a charm in this preacher that he held the pulpit for nine years which had previously been the rostrum of that peerless pulpit orator Thomas H. Stockton. And to this may be added, his was a welcome pulpit presence in Westminster in our own church and in our churches of the town, likewise, under all the various pastors for three times nine. It is not a syllable in excess when in a word the committee say, no more Christlike light in human investiture have they ever known to be contributed to the brilliant galaxy of the redeemed who encircle the throne of God. Fit companion be for the *noblesse* of the skies. "'Tis only noble to be good." And by common consent our departed friend was the good Doctor Ward. An apposite incident: Many years ago, when Doctor Ward was a pastor in Philadelphia, his little daughter, aged four years, died, and he sorrowed as a loving father would at such a time, but in writing the obituary of his child he introduced the following quotation: "Even for the dead I will not bind My heart to grief; for is it not as if The rose that climbed my garden wall Had bloomed the other side." The sentiment seemed to be a suitable expression of the feelings of his old ministerial associates, who, left lonely by his departure, nevertheless regard his removal - a little in advance of themselves - as suggesting so much in relation to those with whom it is "far better" that to rejoice in hope is wiser than to bind (their) hearts to grief." Doctor Ward received his degree in divinity from Adrian College, Michigan, in 1871, and that of F. S. Sc. From the Society of Science, Art and Literature, London, England, in 1887. Our beloved brother died at his home in Westminster on the evening of the 11th of March, 1897. The funeral services were held there in our church at noon, 15th March. The attendance was immense, the entire town was represented, and a number of our ministers and members from a distance were also present. It was a most impressive assembly. The church was changed into a mausoleum, containing the dead body of an eminent and honored citizen and about the casket, as personally bereaved, gathered all the people who could crowd within sight or hearing. A dirge, low, tender, solemn, yet breathing Christian faith and hope, arose and echoed soothingly over the sacred scene, making all indescribably impressive to universally subdued and reverent hearts. A fit beginning of an hour in closest contact with the awe inspiring providence of God. Then followed the regular services under the direction of Rev. Dr. W. R. Graham, pastor of the church, and which included prayer by Rev. Mr. Miller, of the Lutheran Church; reading of the funeral ritual by one of his committee; sermon by the pastor, and supplementary brief addresses by two of Doctor Ward's long and intimate Conference associates. A letter of respect and condolence was read by the pastor from the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then in session in Baltimore. By invitation Doctor Hering made a brief address. Prof. W. R. McDaniel read a paper expressing the sense of the Faculty of Western Maryland College in the common bereavement by the death of its ex-president. Then the pall-bearers, consisting of the representatives severally of the family, the Faculty and Board of Trustees of the college, and the Maryland Annual Conference, led the way with their sacred burden to Westminster Cemetery, where, after a Christian committal of "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the mortal part of a man who had "faithfully served his generation by the will of God," and who was universally respected and loved, was hidden from human sight. How comforting the faith which can say: "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." S. B. SOUTHERLAND, L. W. BATES, J. J. MURRAY, J. W. HERING, DANIEL BAKER, HENRY SWOPE, Conference Committee March 24, 1897.