The majority of the Ward Family collection is comprised of materials generated by Willis Ward and his son, Harold, and thus reflect the life of the family in the twentieth century. The strengths of the collection rest on materials which document upper-class family life in the first three decades of this century; the development of the Orchard Lake area in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s; the extensive Michigan land holdings of the Ward family; and the history of the lumber town of Deward, Michigan. The researcher should be aware that there are only limited materials in the collection which document either David Ward's business pursuits in Michigan or his personal life. The researcher should supplement those materials with use of Ward's published autobiography.
There are six series which comprise the Ward collection: Personal; Correspondence; Land Holdings; Photographs; Architectural Drawings; and Maps. Whenever possible the original order of materials in the first three series has been maintained.
David Ward, one of Michigan's noted lumber barons, was born in Keene, New York, in 1822. He and his parents and nine brothers and sisters moved to Newport, Michigan, in 1836. Nathan Ward, David's father, was a farmer and surveyor, who taught David the art of surveying and surviving in the woods of Michigan. David's frequent trips with his father into the woods, however, caused him to suffer from bronchitis and while recuperating from a bout in 1840 he began to study medicine. Over the next ten years he taught school and took a variety of surveying jobs, and when financially able, studied medicine at Cleveland Medical College (1847-1848) and the University of Michigan (1850-1851). He received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University in the Spring of 1851.
David Ward had two goals in life: to be a full-fledged medical doctor and a wealthy man. Once he had achieved his first goal, he set out to acquire wealth and he did so by putting his surveying talents to work. He surveyed the vast tracts of pine land in northern Michigan for large operators and charged as his fee, one-fourth of the lands he surveyed. Over the years, through surveying and purchasing, he acquired 800 million feet of pine in Michigan. In addition, he acquired extensive holdings of redwood lands in California, coal lands in West Virginia, and pine lands in Vancouver. By the time he died in 1900, at the age of seventy-eight, he had achieved his second goal. Newspapers estimated his estate to be worth $15 million.
David and his wife, Elizabeth Perkins Ward, raised their three sons and one daughter on a two-hundred acre farm on Orchard Lake, which he purchased in 1862. They moved to Detroit in 1881 because of Mrs. Ward's rheumatism, but spent summers at the farm, and in 1893, Ward built a $30,000 house on the lake. In his later years, his son Willis, grandson Franklin B., and son-in-law George Root helped him run his business concerns. They were named executors of the David Ward Estate.
Willis continued his involvement in Ward businesses after his father's death, and was particularly concerned with the sale and/or development of Ward properties. In addition, he devoted a good deal of time to the development of the Orchard Lake area. He contributed the land which facilitated the organization of the Orchard Lake Country Club, purchased Apple Island on Orchard Lake for conservation purposes, and was active in the good roads movement. He was an author, who wrote extensively on the history of Orchard Lake, an inventor, and was interested in poultry, cattle, and fruit farming. He and his wife Mabel had two children: Marjorie, who married Frederick S. Strong, Jr., a career Army officer and an early founder of the city of Orchard Lake; and Harold, who married Virginia Palmer of Detroit.
Harold carried on his father's business concerns after Willis died in 1944. He also served on the board of directors of Kingswood School Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, and like his father, was actively involved in the Orchard Lake Country Club and in the development of Orchard Lake. Harold died in 1983.
