Scope and Contents: Thirty-one personal diaries of James Thomas Ward, Methodist Protesant minister and president of Western Maryland College, written during his term as College President.
Diaries contain James Thomas Ward's personal comments and document his day to day life. Mostly he writes about his domestic life, wife, daughter and her husband Thomas H. Lewis, grandchildren, servants, and interaction with people from Westminster and Carroll County, Maryland. Written during his tenure as president of Western Maryland College, these diaries also focus on his worries and experiences in initiating and building the college. He also comments on local, regional, and national events and writes about the Maryland Annual Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, which he usually attended.
Ward began writing about the events and people that surrounded his life in the 1830s. It was in 1847 that he took these writings, notes, and early remembrances and put them together in volumes. His daily writings begin in 1841 and continue throughout his life with his last diary entry on February 17, 1897 just two weeks before his death on March 4.
Writtings and diaries written from 1840-1866, April 4, 1894-December 14, 1894, and October 3, 1895-1897 are in the Library of Congress Manuscript collection (Call Number 0452J). Diaries from June 23, 1890-April 2,1894 and December 15, 1894-October 2, 1895 are in the Ward Diaries 1890-1895 collection in the McDaniel College Archives. Diaries from September 19, 1862-September 25, 1864 have not been located.
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