Sarah Atwater
Surnames: Ward
Regions: Cayuga Co., NY - Fond du Lac Co., Winnebago Co., WI
Source: Sketches of Wisconsin Pioneer Women,
by Florence Chambers Dexheimer,
W. D. Hoard & Sons Co., Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin
Pages 114-115
Sarah Atwater Ward was born in Genoa, Cayuga County, New York, September 4, 1821. She was the thirteenth of fifteen children, eleven boys and four girls. Nine of them lived to be over seventy, Mrs. Ward being eighty-nine when she died. Mrs. Ward's forefathers came over in the Mayflower and she was a real daughter of the Revolution. Her father, John Atwater, was a student at Yale when the Revolutionary War broke out. He left school and enlisted. He was in New York when it was captured by the British and carried dispatches from La Fayette to Washington the night before General Washington made his celebrated "crossing the Delaware". John Atwater's father, Mrs. Ward's grandfather also fought through the whole war.
Mrs. Ward's father taught her to read when she was four years old. She was always a serious minded child and when fifteen years old wrote a poem which was often recited. She was in Newark, New Jersey when the first steamship "British Queen" came from England to America. In 1844 she was married to Alfred Ward at Genoa, New York and the same year they came to Wisconsin. In 1849 they settled in Oshkosh, Winnebago County, where in 1908 Mr. Ward died. Mrs. Ward traded at the first general store in Oshkosh, situated close to the river on Main Street.
In 1850 she attended the first Episcopal service held in Oshkosh, Bishop Kemper officiating. She assisted in her home with the spinning and weaving of all the clothes and baked in the large brick ovens of the early day.
Mrs. Ward spent the last nine years of her life in the Old Ladies' Home. She was a great favorite of the D. A. R. and was always invited to attend their special meetings. She had a splendid memory so that she could entertain by reciting poetry or telling stories of olden times. She was buried in Rienzi Cemetery, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
