Anne Titboald was the daughter of Thomas and Jane Tidboald (also spelled Tidbald) of Topsham, Devon, near Exeter in England.

As a member of the Primitive Methodist church,[4] she was expected to take an active role in social outreach along with religious conversion efforts.

[5] As part of a fundraising effort to support the women and children of soldiers away fighting in the Crimean War, a Ladies Charity Bazaar was held in the Athenaeum on 1 May 1855, and Mrs. Ward was listed as a stall holder.

[6] A year later, Dudley Ward became a Member of the House of Representatives in New Zealand's second parliament, serving for the Wellington Country electorate.

"[7] She was still sick months later: Judge Ward wrote to his colleague Sir John Hall in March 1858 to explain why he cannot come to Auckland, saying he was busy with district court dates but also "partly on account of Mrs. Ward's state of health, which is so precarious that I dare not leave the Province for any long period, which of course renders her completely unable to travel.

This group typically offered funds or services for indigent immigrants, the elderly, ill or impoverished who had no family to take care of them.

[1]: 151  The economic problems of the 1880s impacts the Judge's health in the early part of the decade, and he took Anne with him to spend a year at the Hot Springs at Waiwera, north of Auckland.

By this point, the Judge had begun his love affair with the writer Frances Ellen "Thorpe" Talbot (1850–1923) and had bought a house for her in Dunedin.

Leavitt left New Zealand having created seven local chapters affiliated with the WCTU (as well as reorganising the original club in Invercargill) and gathered over 4000 signatures for the Polyglot Petition.

"Very grateful reference was made to Mrs. Mary Clement Leavett, as the founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in New Zealand, and testimony was given of her untiring labour of love in this Colony, which is already yielding and abundant harvest.

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Ebenezer Baker, and besides Anne Ward, Mrs. Fulton, Mrs. Wroughton, and former premier and Member of Parliament Sir William Fox was seated on the platform.

Ward gave a report on her work running cooking classes in Christchurch, and that butchers had supplied meat for soup for the poor.

At the third national WCTU convention in Dunedin on 22 February 1888, the minutes reported that Anne Ward had established a Free Kindergarten in Auckland which provided dinner and had a creche for infants of working mothers.

[26] The school was not supported by the Auckland Board of Education,[27] but relied on private contributions to support the renovating of the building (the City Council had donated the use of the former Free Public Library on High Street),[28] providing care, medical checks and feeding of nearly 1000 children under five years of age from June 1887 to 1899 after Anne Ward's death.

[1]: 263 At a WCTU meeting in a town 20 kilometres north of Christchurch, Kate Sheppard spoke on the franchise in the Kaiapoi Wesleyan Schoolroom on 1 October 1890.

"[33] In 1891, the WCTU NZ under the leadership of Annie Jane Schnackenberg sent up to the House of Representatives eight petitions for woman suffrage signed by more than 9000 women.

This act offered all adult women citizens (except inmates of prisons and asylums) the right to vote in the general election held in November (for whites) and December (for Maori).

[34] The Electoral Roll for New Zealand in 1896 shows "Ann Ward" living in Kaiapoi, Canterbury, and whose occupation was "domestic duties.

[39] The Lyttelton Times offered a short obituary: She was buried in what is now called the All Saints Church Cemetery, and her gravestone has the words: 'For the taken, God be praised.