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Ferdinand Ward
1851–1925 · 74 years Tier III
The swindler who took the last thing Ulysses S. Grant had
His father was a Presbyterian minister who had gone out to India as a missionary and come home to a pulpit in Geneseo, New York. Ferdinand was the youngest of three surviving children, and he arrived in New York City in 1873, at 22, to clerk at the Produce Exchange. Early on he stole money out of a Sunday school and washed it through a bank. In 1877 he married an heiress, Ella Champion Green, and began operating on her family's money. By 1880 he had his own banking and brokerage house and a nickname on Wall Street, the Young Napoleon of Finance. The newspapers would eventually settle on a different one, the best-hated man in the United States.
James D. Fish, president of the Marine National Bank, put in early money and kept colluding to the last day. Ward reached Ulysses S. Grant Jr. through a Columbia roommate, hung the name on the door, and then landed the former president himself, who put in 100,000 dollars and became a full partner. Ward told investors he had inside access to government contracts. He pledged the same securities over and over against new loans and paid the old investors out of the new ones, at two and three percent a month. Nobody checked. It bought him nine million dollars, a brownstone in Manhattan and a 25-acre estate in Connecticut. On May 4, 1884, the firm failed, the Marine National Bank went down with it, and the Panic of 1884 began.
Thomas Nast, who had drawn Grant into the White House, lost everything. Grant, 62 and out of office, borrowed 150,000 dollars from William H. Vanderbilt and could not stop the collapse, and came out of it with almost nothing. That autumn the doctors found the throat cancer. He spent the last year of his life writing his memoirs against it, some days 25 to 50 pages, so that his widow would have an income, and finished the manuscript on July 18, 1885, five days before he died. Mark Twain published it. Julia Grant took in roughly 450,000 dollars within three years. The best book any American president wrote exists because Ferdinand Ward emptied the accounts.
At trial he offered no remorse, explaining that he had to rob Peter to pay Paul. He drew ten years and served six at Sing Sing. Ella died in 1890 and left her estate to their son Clarence rather than to him, so he went after the money through the courts and then through a botched attempt to have the boy kidnapped. He remarried in 1894, dying in New York in 1925 at 74 and going into the ground at Green-Wood. He is on this site for what he destroyed rather than for anything he built. In 2012 his great-grandson, the historian Geoffrey C. Ward, published A Disposition to Be Rich, the fullest account of him.
Lifespan
Ferdinand Ward's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
Grant & Ward
company
The brokerage that carried a former president's name and 100,000 dollars of his money 1880 -
The rehypothecation scheme
other
The same securities pledged again and again as collateral for new loans 1882 -
The Panic of 1884
other
Set off by the collapse of Grant & Ward and the Marine National Bank 1884
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1873 aged ~22 Arrives in New York City and clerks at the Produce Exchange He was soon stealing from a Sunday school and laundering it through a bank.
- October 10, 1877 aged ~26 Marries the heiress Ella Champion Green Her family's money became his working capital.
- 1880 aged ~29 Opens his own banking and brokerage firm Ulysses S. Grant Jr. and then the former president himself came in as partners.
- May 4, 1884 aged ~33 Grant & Ward fails and the Panic of 1884 begins The Marine National Bank went with it. Thomas Nast and the Grants were ruined.
- 1885 aged ~34 Sentenced to ten years at hard labor in Sing Sing He told the court he had to rob Peter to pay Paul.
- July 23, 1885 aged ~34 Grant dies five days after finishing the memoirs Ward's fraud forced him to write The book earned Julia Grant roughly 450,000 dollars in three years.
- April 10, 1890 aged ~39 Ella dies and leaves her estate to their son, not to him He sued, then tried to have the boy kidnapped.
- March 21, 1894 aged ~43 Remarries and disappears from public life
- 1925 aged ~74 Dies in New York City at 74
