After a failed marriage into the Boston Brahmin elite, she married three more times and became a socialite in New Orleans and Louisville, Kentucky.

[2][3][4] Her father, Col. Robert Johnson Ward, was a planter and lawyer who served as the Speaker of the Assembly of Kentucky.

[1][3] The wedding was attended by governors Robert P. Letcher, John J. Crittenden and Lazarus W. Powell, as well as George D. Prentice, the editor of the Louisville Journal.

[2][3] In one last incident, she wore a dress resembling Amelia Bloomer's outfit at a ball in jest; but, her in-laws were not amused.

[3] Meanwhile, her husband served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, and he was killed in combat.

[1][4] After his death, she married her fourth husband, Major George F. Downs, a Kentucky native.

[8] Ward died of a ruptured stomach ulcer on July 8, 1896, at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.

[3] Her son, John Wesley Hunt, worked as the night editor of the New York World.