Seth Edmund Ward (March 4, 1820 – December 9, 1903) was a trader on the California, Oregon and Santa Fe trails who parlayed his success into a real estate empire, some of which is part of today's Country Club District in Kansas City, Missouri.

On April 30, 1857, through connections with Robert Campbell, Ward and Guerrier were commissioned to be the official sutlers at Fort Laramie, giving them a monopoly at the busiest post on the frontier.

On February 9, 1860, Ward married Mary Frances McCarty, the widowed daughter of Col. John Harris of Westport, Kansas City.

In 1871, when his time as official sutler expired, he moved to Kansas City where he bought the 450-acre (1.8 km2) farm of a trading friend William Bent.

In 1897 he leased the east pasture for the Kansas City Country Club's first golf course, where his son Hugh was a founding member.