William Ward (frontiersman)
After Braddock's Defeat, that area became too hostile so James Ward moved his family closer toward Staunton while he joined several expeditions during the French and Indian War.
[1] As a six-year-old, in 1758, Ward joined his father on horseback to travel to the family mill on the Jackson River near Fort Dinwiddie, which was located five miles west of Warm Springs in present-day Bath County, Virginia.
[1][2] In 1774, the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a call for volunteers to create a militia for retaliatory war against the Indian nations along the Ohio River.
[3] By 1777, William had been promoted to lieutenant and was serving at Fort Randolph and also the Greenbrier area with his mother's brother-in-law Captain Matthew Arbuckle.
In a deposition, also signed by what appears to be his future father-in-law, John Anderson, Ward describes that Cornstalk was murdered by a mob of armed men who were angry with the killing and scalping of Robert Gilmore.
[9] Kenton and Ward's paths first crossed in 1774 at Point Pleasant as they were both involved in Lord Dunmore's War and were probably both at the signing of the Treaty of Camp Charlotte.
The description of the 2,000 acres as described by Kenton on the warrant proved to be vague and was not fully defined until a Court of Appeals judgement in March 1801.
[11] In 1788, Ward, in association with Simon Kenton and Robert Rennick, contracted with John Cleves Symmes for large tracts of land in the current locations of Springfield and Urbana, Ohio.
[12] Kenton and Ward started exploring the area of the Mad River Valley of Ohio and making claims as early as 1788.
[13] In April 1799, Kenton and Ward led a group of families from Mason County, Kentucky to an area between present-day Springfield and Urbana.
[12] Upon their arrival to the Mad River Valley, Kenton and Ward worked together to defuse a number of volatile situations where the Treaty of Greenville, which ended the Northwest Indian War in Ohio was close to collapse.
Allegedly, Kenton and Ward immediately traveled to Detroit and secured a letter from Black Snake affirming they had no intention of breaking the treating.
[9][14] Years later, in 1806, the Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, grouped 700 warriors, all painted and plumed for war, at the mouth of Stony Creek, near present-day De Graff in Logan County.
[15] By 1810, the Ward–Kenton–Rennick syndicate had amassed large holdings in the Springfield vicinity alone (astride the Mad River Valley) which spanned over 25,000 acres, or 40 square miles.
Others simply acknowledged that Kenton was totally incapable of managing any form of business and extremely careless and lost his fortune through non-payment of taxes, while Ward was shrewd and very professional.
[12] Colonel Ward had the business sense and foresight to purchase 160 acres which he considered the logical and most acceptable site for Champaign's county seat.
One of his contemporaries described him as follows: He was "tall and broad-shouldered, with high cheek bones, keen eyes and dark auburn hair tied with a black ribbon in a long queue, erect in person and very neat in dress.
He was initially buried with his first wife on the family homestead a few miles north of Springfield but was later re-interred at the Oak Dale Cemetery in Urbana.
