David Ward, Land "Looker" and Property Owner

Reprinted in part from the Crawford Avalanche and the Detroit News. December 30, 1886.

David Ward is perhaps the most pretending millionaire that ever lived in Detroit. In stature he is below medium size, being five feet five and ½ in height; He weighs about 145 to 150 lbs, he is 64 years of age, has a bald head, clean shaven face, hazel eyes and an acute but kindly expression of face. He has little business in Detroit, in which he lives during each winter, and he is seldom seen on its streets.

One of his cousins was the late Eber B. Ward, the Detroit millionaire who died in 1875.

Another is Capt. Eber Ward, of Detroit, manager and part owner of a Lake Superior line of steamers.

David ward was born in 1822 in Keene Valley, which is located in the center of the Adirondack mountains in Essex county, NY near Lake Champlin. His father and mother were born in Vermont and Connecticut respectively, and his grandparents were Massachusetts people. He worked on his father's farm in boyhood, and also assisted his father in his profession as land surveyor in the summer time, attending a district school in winter. A considerable portion of his surveying was done for John Jacob Astor and Peter Smith, who were in partnership in those days.

In 1836, when David was about 13 years of age, the family emigrated to Michigan, and his father bought a farm near Marine City. He continued aiding his father in working on the farm, surveying and looking for pine lands, and getting his education. In the winter of 1839-40 he taught school in the Westerbrook district of China township, in St. Clair County at $10 a month and board.

He studied medical books in the fall of 1840 and continued to teach. He was always very inquisitive and took to reading law during the two years he spent in Port Huron.

Looking Land

From 1840 to 1846 he also did considerable land and road surveying and during the same period attended O.C. Thompson's academy at St. Clair where he was a school mate of David Jerome, afterward governor of Michigan, and Thomas W. Palmer, one of the present U.S. senators of this state.

The popular story is that David Ward "looked" land for Eber B. Ward, and reserved the most valuable tracts for himself, is not founded n fact. There were some differences between the two and David never had any business dealings with his cousin. He did survey for others, receiving a one fifth to ¼ share of the lands acquired. In this work he became the foremost in the northwest. He graduated in medicine at the Michigan University in 1851, though he never practices as a physician.

He married Elizabeth Perkins of Richmond, MI in 1850 and the pair resided in Port Huron for six years. In 1857 he removed to Saginaw City, where he engaged in lumbering for 4-5 years. In 1862 he purchased from Judge Sanford Green a farm of 240 acres, lying between Orchard and Cass lakes, about four miles southwest of Pontiac. In the summer he resides on this farm which is the most beautiful spot on the inland lakes of Oakland County. In the winter time he lives at either his Pontiac residence or his house at 450 Cass Avenue in Detroit. Mrs. Ward is a great sufferer from rheumatism and sciatica and is an invalid therefrom.

His Possessions

Mr. Ward is the largest owner in the state of hardwood and pine land, owning about 220,000 acres in Michigan. He has almost a monopoly of the "cork" pine which is the finest and highest priced variety of that wood. His pine lands have  been selected by himself with an almost infallible judgement of pine values. He also owns 25,000 acres of pine land in Wisconsin and 80,000 acres of stave white oak, whitewood, black walnut, coal and iron lands in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee, all selected by himself. During the last eight years he visited his southern possessions twenty-one times. In eastern Tennessee, he has a large quantity of red hematite and black oxide iron ore lands, of which assays show a yield of from 55 to 75 percent Bessemer steel iron.

David Ward owns no stocks, bonds or mortgages; has no money loaned on interest; and is out of debt. He keeps a very small bank account, and when he makes a sale he purchases more land with the proceeds. He has no partners, keeps his own books, pays his own taxes, has no office other than a room in his house, and writes his own letters, which average 5,000 a year. One of his sons has given him some clerical assistance at intervals during the past years, but he has no clerk or manager whatever but himself. He makes his own purchases and explores the land that he buys.

Mr. Ward transacts in his on room (without display) what many firms do in large, spacious and showy offices, with a dozen or so clerks and high-priced head men. He has done the clerical and other work of at least two $10,000 men during the past forty years. This together with a trained and practical judgment in land values, possessed by no other man in America, are the secrets of his immense pecuniary success.

That's The Kick

The value of his earthly possessions can only be approximated, but it must be from $20 to $25 million dollars. They are fast appreciating in value. He has three sons and three daughters. One of his sons is interested in watch manufacturers in Switzerland, and a portion of the elder Ward's fortune is invested in that enterprise. 

Mr. Ward leads a plain life, very healthy, comfortable and genteel, but not showy or luxurious surroundings. This household expenses are not over $6,000 per year, and he deprecates extravagance in costly carriages, yachts, private railroad cars, and similar things, which he calls unnecessary personal displays of ostentatious pride and vanity. "If I work like a slave," he says, "I chose for my employer and master David Ward".

In relation to his methods of accumulating wealth, he says: "I have no mills, furnaces, or great shows of business of any kind. I own the land and those who desire to develop it come to me to buy. That's the kick".

"When I want some ready money, I sell land or cut some 'cork' pine, have it sawed in Michigan, and sell it to Chicago or eastern parties. There are plenty of lumber firms who want to buy my lumber, because it is the finest pine in the northwest. There were several large coal companies on the Kanawha and New rivers who did not think it necessary to buy the (coal) land back of their operations. So I bought back of their costly works, and when they get out of coal they will naturally come to me to buy. That's the kick.". When Mr. Ward tells this he makes a harmless little kick with his foot at his auditor.

Mr. Ward has no vices or bad habits - that he neither drinks liquor nor uses tobacco in any form. He belongs to no club or secret society, avoids all popular crazes, "isms," or foolish, superficial fashions of the day; "life being too short," he says, "to indulge in such vagaries."

Reprinted in part from the Crawford Avalanche and the Detroit News. December 30, 1886.