Thomas Marcus Decatur Ward facts for kids

Thomas Marcus Decatur Ward (1823-1894) was an American preacher, church leader and activist who aided African-Americans escaping slavery.

Ward is considered to have been a central leader of African American religious activity in nineteenth-century America and has been referred to as “the original trailblazer of African Methodism”. In 1854, he took over leadership of an A.M.E. church in San Francisco. Ward was also the first representative of the church to work on the Pacific coast.

Childhood and early life

Ward was born September 28, 1823 in Hanover, Pennsylvania. His parents and grandparents had escaped from slavery and moved to Pennsylvania, where they became active in the Underground Railroad. His uncle also Samuel Ringgold Ward .

Ward grew up in Philadelphia, where he joined the A.M.E church in 1838 at age 15.

Start of church career

At age 20, he received his license to preach and joined the New England Conference in 1846. Ward became a church elder in 1849.

Ward soon became a member of the AME church hierarchy in Pennsylvania . He was then was elected secretary of the New England Conference for the territories within the national church. During this conference, Ward broached the idea of a "California mission". The church sent him to San Francisco to accomplish it.

San Francisco mission

When Ward arrived in San Francisco, he found the AME church to be very small and impoverished. He was forced to find outside work to survive. He lived in a small complex on 532 Bush Ln. Soon after his arrival, the church was attacked by an arsonist in 1854.

Ward not only faced racial hatred, but also what he felt was a materialistic culture engendered by the California Gold Rush. The Gold Rush brought apparent “wickedness” according to Charles Spencer Smith. Ward believed that he was in a struggle for power with the gold miners and other groups that did not value Christian morals..

Ward became involved in the campaign to Archy Lee. Lee had been transported from Georgia to Sacramento. In 1867, Ward helped raise $50,000 dollars for legals costs of three trials that eventually emancipated Lee. Ward later spent $3,050 to stop Lee's former owner from kidnapping him back to Georgia.

After the beginning of the American Civil War, Ward was president of the California Contraband Relief Association and provided funds for the care of the freedmen. In the mid 1860s Ward was elected as Bishop to the Pacific Coast at the church's annual conference. Ward acted as a delegate to and was also the chair of the education committee of the Colored convention of California.

In Georgia

In his later years, Ward returned frequently to the Northeastern United States to preach He was finally reassigned to the fifth district of the church in Georgia. In Georgia, he presided over numerous general conferences that were held there. In 1875, the church invited white Americans to the conference for the first time.

In one of his sermons, Ward preached of the importance of education and stated, "Encourage learning and you will live; despise it and you will die".

Ward was often described as "old man eloquent". Another common description made by his colleagues was that he was an overweight man who charmed his audiences with a resonate voice and was a man of courage.

In the late 1870s, Freedmen University was founded and one of the halls was named Ward Hall after him for his work with African-American youth. In 1886, Ward created a coalition of religious figures dedicated to the study of learning.

In June 1894, Ward died in Jacksonville, Florida and was buried in Washington D.C.