[William T. Ward at Home with His Wife Estelle Chisholm Ward and Children]

Undated, reproduction
Chickasaw Council House Museum Collection
Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division

William Thomas Ward, whose 1930 remembrance of his years at Wall & Mooney’s School and Vanderbilt is a key source of information about the Chickasaw students who attended the university in the 1890s, only spent the 1895-96 school year at Vanderbilt. In January 1897, the Vanderbilt Hustler reported, “W.T. Ward has renounced the arduous duties of college life and taken unto himself a wife.”  He served in the Chickasaw legislature, worked as the Nation’s auditor, and was a court clerk, bankruptcy lawyer, and judge. His wife, Estelle Chisholm Ward, had left Chickasaw country to attend Potter College in Bowling Green, Kentucky, a precursor of Western Kentucky University. She represented the Chickasaw Nation in a 1928 delegation to Washington, D.C., edited an Oklahoma City magazine called The Super Civilized Indian, and was the elected treasurer of Johnson County, Oklahoma. Unlike most of William’s schoolmates, the Wards were active Republicans.