Henry Augustus Ward

Who was Henry Augustus Ward?

Henry Augustus Ward was an American naturalist and geologist, born in Rochester, New York.

After attending Williams College and the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, where he was an assistant of Louis Agassiz, he traveled in Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, and studied at the Jardin des Plantes, the Sorbonne, and the School of Mines in Paris, and at the universities of Munich and Freiberg. Subsequently, he traveled in West Africa and the West Indies, making natural history collections.

In 1860, he returned to Rochester where he was professor at the University of Rochester until 1865. In Rochester, he founded Ward's Natural Science, a pioneer enterprise of its kind, which collected specimens from all parts of the world, and then mounted and sold them to colleges and museums.

He published:

Notices of the Megatherium Cuvieri

Descriptions of the Most Celebrated Fossil Animals in the Royal Museums of Europe

In 1897, he married a widow, Lydia Avery, president of the Chicago Woman's Club in 1895-96, who wrote Under the Pines, and other Verses; Singing Verses for Children; Love Songs.