Samuel Ward (banker)

Samuel Ward III. ( Born May 1, 1786 in Rhode Iceland, † November 27, 1839 in New York City ) was an American banker.

Family

Ward was born the son of a soldier Samuel Ward and his wife Phebe Greene. His oldest known paternal ancestor, John Ward, came from Gloucester. He served in the army of Oliver Cromwell and emigrated in 1673, after the Stuart Restoration, Newport, Rhode Iceland from. Both Ward's great-grandfather, Richard Ward and his paternal grandfather, Samuel Ward, were Governors of the Colony of Rhode Iceland and Providence Plantations, the former 1741-1742, the latter was 1762-1763 and 1765-1767. Ward's maternal grandfather, the second governor of Rhode Iceland, William Greene. In October 1812 Ward Julia Rush Cutler, a great-niece of Francis Marion married. From the marriage seven children were born, including the writer Julia Ward Howe.

Career

His professional career began as a clerk Ward of a bank. There he rose to partner in 1808. After the financial crisis of 1836, the Bank of England lent the company a total of $ 5,000,000. Soon after, Ward president of the New York Bank of Commerce. In the trade under the name Prime, Ward & King Bank, he remained involved until his death. In 1831 he was a founder of the New York University. Ward was active in many cases as a philanthropist and art collector. So he built at his home near the Broadway, the first private collection of paintings of New York with works by Rembrandt, Snyders and Poussin. He also championed the temperance movement, whose founding member and first chairman, he was in New York City.