On the 9th day of June, 1880, the Rev. James B. Ward, of Searcy Presbytery, Ark., departed this life in great peace, after a painful illness of nine days, in the sixty-eighty year of his age. Relative to brother Ward's early life and start in the ministry, we know but little. When we first knew brother Ward he was a member of Hopewell Presbytery, West Tennessee; and as well as I recollect, he moved to Independence county, Ark., in the fall of 1859, and connected himself with Searcy Presbytery, of which I was a member at that time. We have a correct knowledge of his life from that time up to the year 1874, at which time I moved within the bounds of White River Presbytery. Brother Ward was in very bad health for the last twenty years of his life. He was a doting father and a kind husband, a member of the Masonic fraternity, and a good preacher. I met with one of his sons the other day in Batesville, Ark., and promised him that I would furnish our Church papers with a notice of his death. Will some brother, who is better posted than what I claim to be in reference to brother Ward's early life and start in the ministry, furnish our Church papers with a short biography? We would suggest the name of the Rev. A. E. Cooper, or the Rev. D. P. Coffee.
   Grahan, Ark.
[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, August 5, 1880, page 4]

Rev. James B. Ward was born in South Carolina, February, 1813. Removed with his parents to West Tennessee in 1826, and settled in Carroll county. He professed religion at a camp-meeting at McLemoresville in 1832, and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He soon felt it his duty to preach the gospel. He applied for and obtained license to preach. On the 9th of November, 1837, he was married to Miss Nancy N. Carter, daughter of Alexander and Mary Carter, of Carroll county. He located five miles west of McLemoresville, and preached and labored acceptably through that country, and was loved and esteemed as a good man and a Christian minister.

In October, 1859, he removed to Arkansas, and located in Independence county, twenty miles south of Batesville, where he remained until death removed him from earth to heaven. He died on the 9th of June, 1880. He lived the life of a Christian, and died the death of the righteous.

As a minister, he was above an average. He was not given to those florid flights of eloquence as many speakers are, but his subjects were generally well chosen and well matured; his discourses clear, logical, and full of sound reasoning. He did much good in Tennessee, especially in his own neighborhood, in the vicinity of old Pisgah church, where many of his old friends yet live to mourn his departure, and to bear testimony to this fact. He labored faithfully as a minister in Arkansas, hunting up (as he said) the dark corners to preach at. He was loved by all Christian people who knew him, and ever had the patient and attentive audience of all denominations that attended his preaching. I have heard many Methodists and sinners say since he died, "My preacher is dead."

Uncle James, as he was familiarly called, is no more. He is dead! He was a kind husband, an affectionate father, and good neighbor. We think about as near a perfect man as we ever knew. He leaves a desolate wife and six children (four sons and two daughters) to mourn their loss. May they all live in this world, so that when they come to die they may be reunited and constituted one unbroken family in heaven above, where all is love.
   Pleasant Plains, Ark.
[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, October 28, 1880, page 2]