The Ward Brothers: A Family Divided by the American Revolution

Stephen Ward's house near St. Paul's, destroyed in a British raid in 1778 and rebuilt to its original design in the 1790s.

Two brothers and one of their wives, all buried at St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, show the stakes of choosing sides in the American Revolution.

Two paths

Stephen and Edmund Ward belonged to one of Eastchester's leading families, and in 1775–1776 they split:

Edmund: prison and exile

Like many leading Westchester men, Edmund saw revolution as dangerous folly and sought a peaceful settlement in 1774–1775. After fighting began in Massachusetts in April 1775, such views became a quiet minority — and once the British invaded New York in summer 1776, Patriots saw them as potential collaborators.

• August 1776: local committees jailed Edmund at White Plains, then held him along the Hudson and in Massachusetts.
• March 1777: at 48, he escaped to British lines in New York City, where he spent the war "at his own great Expense," expecting a British victory.

Phoebe: the neutral ground

Phoebe Ward and the children stayed on the farm, scraping by on the notorious "neutral ground" between the British in Manhattan and the Americans in the Hudson Highlands, raided by both sides for supplies.

Her protection seems to have been her brother-in-law Stephen, a trusted Patriot: army commissary, Eastchester's representative in state assemblies, and sequestration officer, confiscating the land of Loyalists who had fled. Apparently swayed by family ties, he seized some but not all of Edmund's 300-acre estate, and Phoebe kept the rest.

Petitioning Governor George Clinton and the assembly for help, she distanced herself from her husband's politics: "a Wife cannot alter Principles or Dictate a Husband so far as to change his present conduct in Matters of so great moment." There's no record she was helped.

Stephen's losses

Patriot rank couldn't protect Stephen's own property. In 1778 British forces, on Lord Tryon's orders, destroyed his fine house three miles north of the church — punishment for Congress's refusal to meet a British peace commission under Lord Carlisle.

The farm is sold

June 1783 was vicious in Westchester: the fighting was over, civil government not yet restored, and anger at Loyalists at its peak. Even Stephen couldn't stop the final confiscation. On June 6, Phoebe wrote to Edmund in New York:

"Kind Husband: I am sorry to acquaint you that our farme is sold. … I have suffered most Every thing but death it self in your long absens pray Grant me spedy Relaef or God only knows what will be come of me and my frendsles Children. … your husband has forfeted his estate by joining the British enemy … and thereby was forfeted to the Stat and sold. All at present from you cind and Loveing Wife, phebe Ward. Pray send me speday anser."

Edmund, Phoebe and their children sailed with thousands of Loyalist evacuees to Nova Scotia.

After the war

• Stephen flourished: town supervisor in the 1780s, state senator, judge, presidential elector, and in 1796 elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; he died the next year at 67. His large, prominent pew in St. Paul's in 1787 showed his standing.
• Edmund and Phoebe struggled with Canada's harsh climate and thin opportunities, and by the 1790s joined a small stream of returnees. Given Stephen's stature, some reconciliation must have come first. Edmund's old estate had been divided and auctioned; they settled quietly on a much smaller piece of land.

The last word

Behind the church, Stephen's tall white marble stone once bore a glorious epitaph beginning "Sons of America, Mourn for your country, she has lost a friend Who did her rights and liberties defend" — but acid rain, from the late 19th century on, has erased it. Twenty yards away lies Phoebe, who died in 1801, her stone reading: "Piety and Benevolence constituted the chief Excellencies of her character; But in no duty was she wanting." Edmund died in 1807, at 78. Their sandstone markers have weathered well, and visitors can still read them.

Sources

Based on "Choosing Sides, with tremendous ramifications: The Ward Family and the American Revolution," St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.