Marcus Lawrence Ward was the son of Moses and Fanny (Brown) Ward. His paternal ancestor, John Ward, came with his widowed mother from England and settled in 1635 at Wethersfield, Connecticut; in 1666 he became one of the founders of Newark, N. J. Here his descendant, Moses Ward, was for many years a successful manufacturer of candles, and here Moses' son Marcus was born.
Educated in local private schools, he became a clerk in a variety store in Newark and later entered his father's establishment, becoming in time a partner in the firm of M. Ward & Son. In this connection he became widely known throughout the state and made a private fortune. From his early years Ward took an interest in everything concerning his native city. He became a director in the National State Bank in Newark in 1846, was long chairman of the executive committee of the New Jersey Historical Society, and aided in the formation of the Newark Library Association and the New Jersey Art Union. In 1856 he first took an active part in politics, embracing with vigor the cause of the newly formed Republican party. Because of his intense anti-slavery convictions, he went to Kansas in 1858 to take part in the struggle against the admission of slavery there, but found too much mob violence for his taste, and soon returned to Newark and his business. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War he began to devise means to ameliorate the condition of the families of those New Jersey soldiers who by death or illness had left their wives and children destitute, and also the condition of such soldiers themselves as needed better hospital accommodations than the Government had prepared. With his own funds, and assuming direct oversight of the project, he took possession of a whole floor in the Newark Custom House, employed eight clerks, and there laid plans for carrying out his patriotic and benevolent ideas. He established a kind of free pension bureau, through which he secured soldiers' pay and transmitted it to their families. He founded a soldiers' hospital in his city - the Ward U. S. Hospital, the foundation of the later Soldiers' Home. In 1862 he consented to run as a Republican candidate for governor, but was defeated by the Democrat Joel Parker. He was a delegate in 1864 to the convention at Baltimore that renominated Lincoln; in the same year he became a member of the Republican National Committee, and continued as such until the nomination of General Grant for the presidency. In 1865 he was elected governor of New Jersey by a large majority. During his administration of three years (January 16, 1866 - January 18, 1869) he secured the passage of a public-school law, an act eliminating partisanship in the control of the state prison, and other measures of reform. After a few years of retirement he was elected in 1872 representative in Congress from the sixth New Jersey district and served from March 4, 1873, to March 3, 1875. He was renominated in 1874, but was defeated in a Democratic tidal wave. Declining the federal office of commissioner of Indian affairs, he now retired to private life. After two trips to Europe he visited Florida, where he contracted the malarial fever which brought his death.
On June 30, 1840, Ward married Susan, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Longworth) Morris, by whom he had eight children; two sons, with their mother, survived him.
