Ward Nicholas Boylston, a descendent of the physician Zabdiel Boylston, was a man of wealth and refinement, a merchant, a philanthropist and a great benefactor of Harvard University.
Background
He was born in Boston and spent much of his life there. His father, Benjamin Hallowell, Esq., was the Commissioner of Customs, and the family lived in the Jamaica Plain end of what was then the town of Roxbury, just south of Boston. His mother, Mistress Mary (Boylston) Hallowell, was the daughter of Thomas Boylston, and a first cousin of Susanna Boylston, the mother of the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams, and grandmother of the 6th President, John Quincy Adams.
Career
Ward received his early education in the free public schools of Boston. In 1773, Boylston left Boston for an extended journey through Europe and Asia. In 1775 he arrived in London, living there for twenty-five years and in various aspects of trade.
In 1800 he returned to Boston.
From September, 1804 until his death in 1828, he lived mostly in Princeton, Massachusetts but spent winters at his residence in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Massachusetts. He continued to donate large sums of money to Harvard and in 1810 gave them a valuable collection of medical and anatomical works and engravings.
He donated funds for Harvard"s Boylston Medical Library and the Boylston Anatomical Museum, for various prizes for medical dissertations, and for the Boylston Medical Society.
Membership
He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1819.