WE have seen that my mother’s love of freedom was in part the result of environment. It was also an inheritance from men who had fought for civil and religious liberty, with the sword and with the pen, on both sides of the Atlantic. Of the founder of the Ward family in America, we know that he fought for the English Commonwealth and against “Charles First, tyrant of England.” He was one of Oliver Cromwell’s Ironsides, serving as an officer in a cavalry regiment. After the republic perished and the Stuart line in the person of Charles II. returned to the throne, doughty old John Ward came to America, bringing his good sword with him. Whether it was ever used on this side of the water, the record does not say, but it was preserved in the family for nearly a century.

His descendants held positions of trust and responsibility under the State, his grandson and great-grandson being each in his turn governor of Rhode Island. The latter, Gov. Samuel Ward, has the distinction of being the only Colonial governor who refused to take the oath to enforce the Stamp Act. As the Chief Executive of “little Rhody” was chosen by the people, his views were naturally more democratic than those of governors appointed by the crown. Still, it took courage to refuse to obey the royal mandate. He early foresaw the separation from Great Britain and wrote to his son in 1766, “These Colonies are destined to an early independence, and you will live to see my words verified.” He was a member of the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. The latter resolved itself into a committee of the whole almost every day, and Governor Ward was constantly called to the chair on such occasions, until he was seized with fatal illness, March 13, 1776, dying soon afterward.

At this time vaccination had not been discovered, the only preventive of the terrible scourge of smallpox being inoculation. Now Governor Ward could not spare time for the brief illness which this process involved. In addition to his duties in Congress he was obliged, owing to the physical disability of his colleague, Gov. Stephen Hopkins, to conduct all the official correspondence of the Rhode Island delegation, with the Government and citizens of the colony. His services were required on many committees, notably on the secret committee which contracted for arms and munitions of war. Hence, worn down by overwork, he fell an easy victim to smallpox. He died three months before his colleagues signed the Declaration of Independence. As he early saw the necessity of separation from the mother country, he would certainly have affixed his signature to it had he lived. His descendants may be pardoned for thinking that he made a great mistake in not taking the time required for inoculation.

Many of Governor Ward’s letters have been preserved. These show his ardent patriotism as well as the devout religious spirit of the men of 1776. He writes to his brother: “I have realized with regard to myself the bullet, the bayonet, and the halter; and compared with the immense object I have in view they are all less than nothing. No man living, perhaps, is more fond of his children than I am, and I am not so old as to be tired of life; and yet, as far as I can now judge, the tenderest connections and the most important private concerns are very minute objects. Heaven save my country! I was going to say is my first, my last, and almost my only prayer.”

Gov. Samuel Ward was a Seventh-Day Baptist. The little church in which he worshiped at Newport has all the charm of the best architecture of that period. It now forms part of the Historical Society’s rooms.

His son, Lieut.-Col. Samuel Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, joined the Continental Army when the Revolution broke out. Governor Ward writes of “the almost unparalleled sufferings of Samuel,” and these were indeed severe. Of the ill-fated expedition to Quebec, Colonel Ward writes: “We were thirty days in a wilderness that none but savages ever attempted to pass. We marched one hundred miles upon shore with only three days’ provisions, waded over three rapid rivers, marched through snow and ice barefoot ... moderately speaking, we have waded one hundred miles.” The result of this exposure was “the yellow jaundice.”

The Americans were overpowered by superior numbers, Colonel Ward being taken prisoner with many others. He was also at Valley Forge in that terrible winter when the American Army endured such great privations.

It is interesting to note that Colonel Ward assisted in raising a colored regiment in the spring of 1778. He commanded this in the engagement on the island of Rhode Island, near the spot where his granddaughter and her husband established their summer home a century later. From the peaceful windows of “Oak Glen” one sees, in the near foreground, the earthworks of the Revolution.

In spite of all the hardships endured during the Revolutionary War, Colonel Ward lived to be nearly seventy-six years of age. My mother well remembered her grandfather with his courtly manner and mild, but very observing, blue eyes. With the indulgence characteristic of grandparents, he permitted the Ward brothers to play cards at his house, a thing they were forbidden to do at home.

The State of Rhode Island is represented in the statue-gallery of the national Capitol by Roger Williams, pioneer of religious liberty and founder of the State, and by Gen. Nathaniel Greene, who rendered such important service during the Revolutionary War. My mother was related to both men, being a direct descendant of the former.

Whether or no Massachusetts was justified in driving out Roger Williams, we will not attempt to decide. He was evidently a person who delighted in controversy in a day when religious toleration was almost unknown.

To him belongs the honor of being the first to found a State “upon the distinctive principle of complete separation of Church and State.” Maryland followed not long after the example set by the “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

Not in Massachusetts alone did people object to his doctrines. His work, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, was burned in England by the common hangman, by order of Parliament.

George Fox Digged Out of His Burrowe seems a volume of formidable proportions to the modern reader. With Quaker doctrines Roger Williams had small patience, although he permitted members of the persecuted sect to live in the Colony. It seems that G. Fox did not avail himself of an offer of disputation on fourteen proposals. His opponents claimed that he “slily departed” to avoid the debate. It went on just the same, being “managed three days at Newport and one day at Providence.”

This volume, George Fox, etc.[41], is dedicated to Charles II. by “Your Majestyes most loyal and affectionate Orator at the Throne of Grace.”

One can guess how much attention the Merrie Monarch paid to the fourteen “proposalls”[42] and the elaboration thereof.

The best testimony to the essential gentleness and goodness of this eccentric divine is the behavior toward him of the Indians. During King Philip’s war they marched on Providence with the intention of burning it.

“The well-attested tradition is that Roger Williams, now an old man, alone and unarmed, save with his staff, went out to meet the band of approaching Indians. His efforts to stay their course were unavailing, but they allowed him to return unmolested, such was the love and veneration entertained for him by these savages.”

Of my mother’s ancestors on the maternal side, the most interesting was her great-great-uncle, Gen. Francis Marion, the partisan leader of the Revolution. She was descended from his sister Esther, “The Queen Bee of the Marion Hive,” the general himself having no children.

Many romantic stories are told of him. He was present at a drinking-party during the siege of Charleston when the host, determined that no one should leave the festivities until some particularly fine Madeira had been disposed of, locked the door and threw the key out of the window. Marion had no notion of taking part in any excesses, so he made his escape by jumping out of the window. A lame ankle was the result, and the Huguenot left the city, all officers unfit for duty being ordered to depart. Marion took refuge now with one friend, now with another, and again he was obliged to hide in the woods, while recovering from this lameness. The accident was a most fortunate one, however. If he had remained in Charleston he would have been obliged to surrender and the brigade of “Marion’s Men” might never have existed.

How he formed it in the darkest hour of the war in the South is a matter of history. How, like so many will-o’-the-wisps, they led the British a weary dance “thoro’ bush, thoro’ brier,” all through the woods and the swamps of South Carolina, is a tale that delights the heart of every school-boy.

The best-known story tells of the British officer who was brought blindfolded into Marion’s camp and entertained at a dinner consisting solely of sweet potatoes. Small wonder that he made up his mind the Americans could not be conquered, since they were able to subsist on such scanty rations!

Reversing the text of Scripture, General Marion provided his men with swords made of saws, ammunition being scanty. He was as well known for his humanity as for his ingenuity. It is said that once, wishing to draw his sword, he found it rusted into the scabbard, so little had it been used.

When my mother, as occasionally happened in her later years, would quietly slip off on some expedition which her daughters feared was too much for her strength, we would remember her kinship with the “Swamp Fox.”

Of her parents, it should be said that both were deeply religious. Her mother, Julia Cutler Ward, a woman of very lovely character and intellectual tastes, died at the early age of twenty-seven. Her father, Samuel Ward, one of the “Merchant Princes of Wall Street,” was well known for his integrity, liberality, and public spirit. He was especially interested in the causes of temperance and religion, being “one of the foremost promoters of church-building in the then distant West.” He was also one of the founders of the New York University, and owned the first private picture-gallery in New York.

Thus we see that my mother, like so many of her fellow-Americans, came from a long line of God-fearing and patriotic men and women. In the words of the “Battle Hymn” we hear not only the voice of the Union Army, but an echo of all the aspiring thoughts and noble deeds of the builders of our great Republic.

THE END