Biographies W
William Flam Ward
Capt. William Flam Ward, Muhlenberg County, Ky., was born in that county January 22, 1835. His father died in Natchez, Miss., during the cholera scourge of 1851, while under the care of Dr. L.T. Blackburn, late governor of Kentucky. The mother died in 1853, leaving six daughters and one son, William F., who was then about fourteen years of age. He continued to reside on the farm, where he worked during the summer season, and in winter flat-boated on the river between Rochester, Ky., and New Orleans, La.
At the beginning of the civil war in 1861, he recruited a company and joined the Eleventh Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, in which he held the rank of lieutenant; after the engagement at Stone River, he was made captain, which rank he held until he was discharged at the close of his term of service, December 16, 1864. He was engaged in the battles of Shiloh, Stone River, siege of Knoxville, Atlanta and all the other engagements in which his regiment participated. While in the United States service he received two severe wounds, one in the right side at the battle of Stone River, the other in the left thigh, and received at an engagement near Knoxville, Tenn., on November 15, 1863.
After the close of the war he returned home and resumed farming, which he has continued with extraordinary success up to the present time. He owns 1,700 acres of land in Muhlenberg County, a large portion of it is fenced and in cultivation, and improved with good houses, barns and other modern conveniences, also an orchard of 400 trees in good bearing condition. The Captain's strong point is stock farming.
He commenced life for himself with only $100, and has arrived at his present state of comfortable independence through his own labor and judicious management. He attributes much of his success to the assistance and encouragement of his wife, Minnie J. Nourse, to whom he was married on January 28, 1863; she is a native of Butler County; to them have been born four children: Farrell A.P., Atlanta Beatrice, Oma Lincoln, and James Garfield.
Mrs. Ward is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Capt. Ward is not a member of any church, his religious views are founded on the principles of justice and fair dealing. He is a Master Mason, and a member of Rochester Lodge No. 270; he is a Republican, and takes a lively interest in the political questions of the day, more especially those that pertain to the interests of his own county.
Flam Ward, his grandfather, was a native of Ireland and immigrated to Virginia, where he married Mary Reilly; at an early day came to Kentucky and settled on Gaspar River, in Warren County. He was killed by an ambushed assassin near Russellville in 1818. The maternal grandfather, David Kimmel, was of German descent, and a native of Pennsylvania; he died in 1878, aged upward of one hundred years.
Source: Battle, J.H., W.H. Perrin, and G.C. Kniffen. Kentucky: A History of the State. Louisville, KY: F.A. Battey, 1885. Page 924-925.
Updated July 9, 2018