USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Chronography of notable events in the history of the Northwest territory and Wayne County > Part 25
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He was chosen President of the Constitutional Convention of 1835, notwithstanding his party (Whig) was in the minority, and subsequently received a majority of the votes for United States Senator. He was subsequently the Whig candidate for Governor. He took an active part in sustaining his fellow soldier, General Harrison, for the Presi- dency, in 1840, and also General Scott, when he was a candidate. During the latter years of his life he spent much of his time on his farm, the present site of Wyandotte, and also in looking after a large estate in St. Louis, to which he had fallen heir. In 1859, returning from a trip to Europe, he spent the summer at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, where he died suddenly on the 25th of August, 1859, leaving as surviving members of his family, the widow of General Andrew Porter, William S. Biddle, Major James Biddle and Edward I. Biddle.
MRS. S. DAVENPORT, and DR. LOUIS DAVENPORT.
" Her whole life was an example of great excellence of character. She was beloved by the rich and poor; by the former for her gentle and cultivated manners, and by the latter for her generous sympathy in their misfortunes, practically demonstrated by her liberal gifts in relief of their physical needs." Such is the tribute to the memory of the sub- ject of this sketch.
Mrs. Sarah (Horner) Davenport was born in Detroit, January 25, 1810. She was the daughter of Mr. Archibald Horner and Elizabeth Thorn. Her father was a native of Philadelphia, and was a relative of the late Professor `Horner of the Pennsylvania Medical College, who was the author of several works now used as text books by the pro- fession, and the colleges of this country. Her mother, Elizabeth Thorn,
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was a native of Detroit, and was born in the same house where the subject of this sketch and all her children first saw the light. This house occupied the present site of Basset's drug store and Gourley Bros.' furnishing store, on Woodward avenue. Her father came to Detroit in 1803, for the benefit of his health, after his marriage, which occurred November 6, 1804, he operated in real estate. Among other realty owned by him was ten acres of what is now Woodward avenue, through which Davenport street now runs. He was one of the first eleven tax payers when the city of Detroit was incorporated in 1805. He died in 1812, leaving a widow and three daughters, one of whom was the sub- ject of this sketch.
In 1815, Mrs. Horner married for her second husband, John Walker, third son of John T. Walker, who was well known in Detroit. He was an officer in the United States Navy, and died leaving his wife the second time a widow, with two children, a son and daughter, whose early life was cared for after the death of the mother, by Mrs. Daven- port, and after the marriage and death of her half sister, she also took care of and brought up the four children left by the former.
On the 18th of January, 1826, she married Louis Davenport, who was born in the State of Vermont, in the year 1796. He was engaged in merchandising, and was also the proprietor of the ferry at the foot of Woodward avenue. He amassed a large property both in Detroit and Windsor. According to the English laws, his Canada property fell to his only son, who was very much respected, and was recognized as one of the most enterprising men of his day, doing much to promote the material growth of Detroit. He died September 8, 1848, leaving the subject of this sketch a widow, with two daughters, Mrs. Dr. G. B. Russell, and Mrs. H. D. Wight, and an only son, Dr. Louis Davenport.
No more unselfish woman ever lived. She was most truly beloved by all who knew her. She departed this life October 22, 1879. Her remains were borne to the grave by her six grandchildren.
Doctor Louis Davenport, her only son, died but a few hours subsequent to the death of his mother, and the remains of both were deposited side by side in one grave.
The doctor was strongly attached to his mother, and during her ill- ness, had been unremitting in his devotion and attention. She died at 7 a. m., and he then went to his office, expecting to return soon; not return- ing, a messenger was sent to his office, and found him dead. Subse- quent investigation developed that he died from a congestive chill induced by the exposure, anxiety and fatigue incident to the illness and death of his mother. The opinion of the physicians, after a post mortem examination, expressed surprise "that he had not died ere he left for his office, as the evidence of his enfeebled condition indicated but little physical power to resist the shock which the death of his mother must have produced."
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Doctor Louis Davenport was born in the same house where his mother and grandmother were born, December 26, 1829. He took his first medical instruction from Dr. Russell, and after a preliminary pre- paration at the Ann Arbor University, graduated at the Cleveland College of Medicine. He began his practice first at Houghton, Lake Superior, but soon returned to Detroit and settled. He was a most successful surgeon. From 1861 to 1868 he was Surgeon of the U. S. Marine Hospital at Detroit. It was during this period that the com- piler made his acquaintance, which ripened into a close and intimate friendship, never broken until death intervened. Dr. Davenport pos- sessed many noble traits of character, the exhibition of which made him numerous friends, who cherish his memory with sincere affection. He was regarded by his professional brethren as a skillful physician, and by his fellow citizens as a public spirited, kind hearted man. To his relatives he ever manifested that loving affection which could forego personal comfort, and encounter any pain, to promote their happiness.
EBER BROCK WARD.
No two men have done more to develop the northwest, and more particularly Michigan and its metropolis, than Captain Eber Brock Ward and James F. Joy. In many respects they were alike. Neither permitted ordinary obstacles to interfere with the accomplishment of what they had undertaken. Both recognized that personal interests should be subordinate to public good, that to benefit the masses, self must be lost sight of. Both found in Michigan and the northwest a field for the exercise of their power to conceive, perfect and complete large enterprises, where millions of money were required, but where millions of men and women would be correspondingly benefited. While Mr. Joy was reducing distances with the iron rail, Captain Ward was covering the waters of the great lakes with his fleet of steamers. Thus co-operating, they afforded the workingman compensating employment, the farmer ready sale for his products, the manufacturer cheap transportation for the raw material and the manufactured article, the educator and philanthropist the opportunity to establish means and appliances for the elevation of humanity. They developed the mineral resources of this vast territory, utilizing them in the construction of iron and steel mills and the establishment of other mechanical industries by which they were converted into sources of wealth, and the addition of an industrious population.
The following extracts from the Chicago Tribune and the Inter Ocean of January 4, 1875, afford a fair diagnosis of the man, and the estimation in which he was held.
The Chicago Tribune says: -
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"The most remarkable characteristic of Captain Ward was his wonderful business ability and his capacity for organizing industrial enterprises. Probably no other business man in this country, during the past quarter of a century, has shown these qualities to such a remarkable extent. His clearness of judgment and wonderful execu- tive power, which enabled him to grasp every detail of his business operations, were such that he rarely missed his calculations. In his management of an iron and steel mill or a furnace, he laid out the details with such care that he seldom made a mistake in its building and operation, or in finding a market for its products. It was owing to the control of his business, and the knowledge of what he was doing, that the panic, which prostrated the iron business more completely, per- haps, than any other business in the country, affected him less than any other ironmaster. His capacity in this respect was all the more remarkable from the fact that he was operating at the same time half a dozen large iron and steel establishments and extensive glass and silver interests. His specialty, however, was in iron and steel, and his policy was to multiply and enlarge these establishments, and in doing this he always secured success where success was possible."
The Chicago Inter Ocean says:
" Detroit suffered a great loss, Saturday, in the death of Mr. Eber B. Ward. Attacked by apoplexy, he fell in the street, and died almost instantly. Nor is the loss of so justly distinguished a citizen confined to his own city and State. Through his great enterprises his name had become familiar to the Northwest, and, indeed, in all the land. He belonged to the whole country by virtue of the fact that he labored throughout a long and useful life to build up American industries. His death, occurring at a time of great industrial prostration, is a calamity which will be mourned in every manufacturing center of the United States.
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" Probably no single individual in the United States did so much as Mr. Ward in disseminating useful information on the subject of the advantages of the promotion of home industries. He was largely instrumental in breaking up the American Free Trade League, which was an offshoot of the British league of the same name, and supported by the contributions of that organization. It will be recollected that Simon Stern, an English adventurer, was sent to this country in 1865 by the British league to establish the American league. He came to Chicago, established a branch here, met the editors of the Tribune, and converted that journal-which had, up to that time, been a friend of American manufacturers-to free trade. Mr. Ward attacked the British-American league theoretically in pamphlets and practically by the great manufactories he established, thus providing labor for thou-
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sands, and creating a market for other thousands at their very doors. Under these vigorous blows the league gradually fell into decay, and it is now a mere lifeless shadow of its former arrogant pretensions.
"During the late war Mr. Ward was an ardent supporter of the Union cause, working as a private citizen, in his own way, through the publication of stirring appeals and their circulation by means of his extensive business connections. Mr. Ward was for many years presi- dent of the American Iron and Steel Association, and a director at the time of his death. He, however, declined all public station, deeming that he could better serve the country by pushing forward his great industrial enterprises. He acquired vast wealth, his estate being vari- ously estimated at from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000. The great work performed by Mr. Ward remains to the country in the form of the mammoth manufacturing establishments he has built up. They are his fitting monuments."
Eber Brock Ward, the only son of Eber Ward and Sally Totten Ward, was born in New Hamborough, Upper Canada, December 25th, 18II. His parents were Vermonters and moved west early in their married life, and they and their family bore the privations, trials and hardships which at that day belonged to pioneer life. Living near the rivers and great lakes, the boy naturally thought much of their navi- gation. He worked at farming and gardening, occasionally fishing and trapping. Schools were very poor and generally kept up but three months in a year. The father supplemented it by his own instructions, teaching his son the art of thinking and establishing habits of industry and economy, and principles of probity and honor. With this capital alone, he left home at a little over twenty-two years of age to work for his uncle, Samuel Ward, of St. Clair county, Mich. This was in 1834. His father regretting his inability to give his son finan- cial aid, said to him: " You are going, my son, without money, but you have hands hardened with labor, and a mind innured to thought and good and well established principles. Stick to these, my boy, and your success in life is assured."
With his uncle he assisted in getting out ship timber and had more or less supervision of the farm, small country store and postoffice. In 1836 he took one quarter interest in a small schooner, commencing a partnership which continued during his uncle's life. He married Miss Mary Margaret McQueen in 1837. In 1840 the partners built their first steamer for river service, but soon after they were actively engaged in the building of steamers, until at one time they owned and managed twenty boats. In 1845 he commenced running a couple of steamers in connection with the west terminus of the Michigan Central railroad at Marshall, and by stage coach to St. Joseph, and in 1846 the road reached Kalamazoo, continuing the same connections with the
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steamers. The fare from Detroit to Chicago by this route was six dollars and fifty cents. In the spring of 1849 the road was completed to New Buffalo, and the Ward steamers connected with the road run- ning from it to Chicago and Milwaukee, and the same year they ran steamers connecting the Michigan Central road with Buffalo and east- ern roads. In 1852 the Michigan Central entered Chicago, and in 1856 the Great Western Railroad was finished and connected at Detroit with the Michigan Central. The Ward boats afterward did good service on lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior. No misfortunes dis- couraged him, always moving on with the energy and power of strong hope. He invested a little in pine lands, built a rolling mill at Wyan- dotte, gradually decreasing his steamboat interests, building a roll- ing mill at Chicago, and finally built one in Milwaukee. He believed that the best philanthropy of the age was that which gave the great- est amount of remunerative labor to the working men of the country, and when necessary, to combine capital for that purpose. He was, from principle, equally opposed to the large salaries of the officers and managers and to the often unreasonable demands of labor.
Eber Brock Ward died January 2d, 1875, in Detroit. He believed in God, in universal law, in the communion of spirits, in life everlasting and eternal progress. His heart was large, his charity abundant, his forethought and foresight wonderful, making his judgment in business matters superior and much sought after by others. His nephews and nieces and a long list of friends and relatives remember with gratitude his kind heart and open purse.
" AUNT" EMILY WARD.
In " Aunt" Emily's strong personality are combined the sturdy, self-reliant qualities of the admirable woman of pioneer days and true philanthropic instincts, which are neither confined to any one time nor monopolized by one sex. "Aunt" Emily came into the lake country when it was a wilderness, was around when the foundations of a State were being laid, and knew with what difficulty a goodly superstructure, comely in appearance, was built. The life which has been marked by brave encounters with so many things hard to be endured, which has been the center of a wide and widening circle of wholesome influence, and which has been prolonged to its reward in affectionate gratitude and years of retrospection on past good deeds and their ineffable results, began March 16, 1809, at Manlius, a little town in Onondaga county, N. Y., near Syracuse. "Aunt" Emily's father, Eber Ward, was the son of a Vermont Baptist clergyman. Her mother's father, Captain Potter, was a retired English shipmaster.
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After his marriage in Vermont, Mr. Ward, who was a farmer and trader, went west to the vicinity of Syracuse, then beyond the receding boundary of the Far West. His second child, Sallie, was born at Selina, not far from Manlius. Returning to Vermont with his wife and two little daughters, Mr. Ward, after a short stay there, went to Canada, and located near the present site of the city of Toronto. Here Captain Eber B. Ward, the late Detroit millionaire and vessel owner, was born. Their residence in Canada was of short duration, and they left on the day hostilities were declared between England and America. The international episode found no place in "Aunt " Emily's memory, although she still retains a vivid recollection of the domestic incidents preliminary to the change in residence. Mr. Ward went back to his former home near Rutland, Vt., and the family remained there five years.
It was during this latter stay in Vermont that a little incident occurred which has been made a family tradition, not because of the narrowness with which it escaped being a family tragedy, although but for great good fortune there would never have been any "Aunt" Emily after that day, but because it shows the precocious development of something that proved a marked characteristic in her later years.
In December, 1817, Mr. Ward started with his family in a canvas-covered sleigh for Kentucky, where he had been on a trading expedition a few months before, and where he had decided to locate permanently. Their route lay across the states of New York and Pennsylvania, and the journey was a long and wearisome one, occupy- ing weeks. After traversing New York state for some distance, Mr. Ward was attacked with pleurisy and laid up for six weeks, during which time the journey had to be suspended. Some of those really heroic qualities which made "Aunt" Emily equal to any emergency were inherited from her mother. Burdened with the care of her young children, and with her husband critically ill many hundred miles from home, Mrs. Ward faced the situation and nursed the patient back to health. The fatigue of the journey and the care of her husband were too much for her, however, and after their journey had been resumed she was threatened with a danger incident to motherhood. At Water- town, Pa., she died after a few days' illness.
Her death changed Mr. Ward's plans. Taking his grief-stricken, motherless children, he diverted his course from Kentucky to the lake . country. Reaching New Salem, now Conneaut, Ashtabula county, O., he brought his long journey to a close, and remained there for about four years, making trading trips up the lakes in the summer time.
Mr. Ward never remarried. His family, in addition to "Aunt" Emily, consisted of Sallie, Eber B., and Abbie. "Aunt " Emily became housekeeper for her father and mother, as well as elder sister for his
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children. It was a slight little figure, just turned nine years old, on which these grave responsibilities were thrust, but it was a brave little figure, with a head wiser than its years, and the manner in which, with a mind keenly sensitive to the obligations of duty, she took up and met these responsibilities was ever the wonder and admiration of those who were the objects of her loving regard. The family was not poor. Mr. Ward had about five thousand dollars when he left Vermont, and five thousand dollars was a large sum in those days, but in the absence of improvements in the general method of living which have been made since that time, and in the lack of many comforts which were inaccess- ible in the frontier regions, the young housekeeper encountered priva- tions and hardships which could come now only as the result of extreme poverty.
"Aunt" Emily's character was earnest, practical and just, and she brought the children up in an old-fashioned, practical way, enforcing homely truths and virtues which they never forgot and which gave her great influence over them during their lifetimes. Her rule in the household was firm, but administered with kindliness of heart, and there never would have been any uprising against her authority but for the occasional meddling of outsiders. When it was hinted to Sallie that her sister was only a year the elder, and that she needn't mind her unless she wanted to, that young lady showed once in a great while an inclination to rebel, but "Aunt" Emily's force of character and con- sciousness of the integrity of her motives preserved authority in the household.
Mr. Ward's brother Samuel had located at Marine City, then known as Yankee Point, or Newport, and already owned several schooners which he utilized in trading.
The date of "Aunt" Emily's return to Marine City was about 1845, and the succeeding twenty years, while saddened by the death of both her sisters, were among the happiest and busiest of her busy life. Both sisters left large families of children, over whom " Aunt " Emily, with added years of experience, exercised the same kind guardianship she had exercised over their mothers. "Aunt" Emily found her mis- sion among children, and it was a mission in which her devotion was earnest and unwearying. There were many not connected with her by ties of relationship who, left orphaned and neglected, became her foster children. She made men and women of them. There were ten children at one time there in the old house at Marine City, surrounded by its big garden. It was a big family. Ten active little brains plot- ing mischief required watchfulness and firmness for their circumvention, but " Aunt " Emily's managerial capacity was great.
Captain E. B. Ward was by this time a prosperous business man with children of his own, and they came in for a share of "Aunt"
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Emily's attention. The captain built a school-house, equipped it with charts, globes, and many other appliances which were seldom employed as aids to education in those days, and all the children of both families went there to school together. Others were allowed to participate in its advantages on payment of small sums. It was called an academy, and higher mathematics and the various sciences that have a place in a liberal education, or at least in the preparation for one, were taught there. A college graduate was generally placed in charge of the school, and Captain Ward paid his salary. "Aunt" Emily had charge of the schoolmaster, the schoolhouse, and the pupils, and was board of education of one, with original and appellate jurisdiction. They were pleasant days. The eyes of a fair-faced, middle-aged woman, who formed a part of that big family, who lived in the house with the garden around it, and who was educated in "Aunt " Emily's public school system, filled with tears yesterday as she spoke of them.
" Aunt" Emily brought up fourteen children from childhood to years of maturity. There are half a dozen others for whom she cared for periods of several years. The number of those whom she took in charge for a brief time, varying from a few weeks to a year or two, perhaps, or to whose rescue she came with timely assistance at critical times, or with stimulating words and advice that had a bearing on their whole subsequent lives, would reach into the hundreds. James G. Hagerman, millionaire railroad man and mine operator of Colorado Springs, Col., is one who is pleased to attribute his success in great degree to her influence. The first letter Don M. Dickinson wrote on taking the office of postmaster-general was one addressed to " Aunt" Emily, acknowledging a heavy debt of gratitude.
"I know a millionaire and big railroad president who says that but for "Aunt" Emily he would have been a poor plodder all his days," is the statement of one who is conversant with some of " Aunt " Emily's good deeds. "I know another millionaire business man who, although ungrateful to her, would never have amounted to much if she had not sent him to school for a year and got him a place in her brother's employ."
At one critical period in the captain's early business career it was due, as he afterward often related, entirely to Emily's opportune assist- ance that he was saved from ruin. It was while the latter was at Bois Blanc Island. A large new boat of the captain's was lost soon after its completion in a storm on the lakes, with its entire cargo. It was a handsome boat, elegantly furnished, and Captain Ward had spent a great deal of money on her, including large sums which he had borrowed. The loss put him in great financial straits. Large amounts which he owed would fall due in a few days. The loss of the boat could easily be made up if he was allowed to continue, but he feared
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the loss of his credit. He made an effort to procure assistance, but was unsuccessful. He came to Detroit and wandered about the streets, discouraged and dejected for some time. Meeting a friend who had just arrived from northern Michigan, he was handed a packet of money sent down by " Aunt" Emily. The latter had heard of the loss of the boat, and without waiting for further advices sent him all the money in her possession, knowing that he would need it. There was $1,500 in the packet, and the captain always said he never could understand how Emily had managed to save so much. It was a small sum compared with the captain's needs, but with it he was enabled to make such a showing as availed to relieve him in his extremity. He was able to turn himself and escape ruin, owing, according to his own statements, to " Aunt Emily's $1,500.
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