Samuel Ward was born in Warwick, R. I, the fifth son of Samuel Ward, 1756-1832, and Phebe (Greene) Ward, the daughter of Gov. William Greene of Rhode Island. In 1790, when the boy was four years old, his family moved to New York, where his father engaged in mercantile pursuits with indifferent success.
Since the family income was too small to permit of his being sent to college, Ward received only a common-school education.
At the age of fourteen began work as a clerk in the prominent banking house of Prime & Sands. In 1808, when he was only twenty-two, he was made a partner and in time he became head of the firm, the name of which was changed to Prime, Ward & King. A believer in the observance of contractual obligations, he was deeply mortified by the suspension of specie payments on May 10, 1837, by the New York banks, an act which he regarded as a blot upon the city's commercial honor. During the ensuing panic several of the American commonwealths repudiated their obligations, and but for the strenuous opposition of Ward the State of New York might have followed their example. Repeatedly he called meetings of the leading financiers, and by his persistence induced them to tide the state over the crisis. So great was confidence in the integrity of his firm that he was able in the early part of 1838 to obtain a loan of some five million dollars in gold bars from the Bank of England, which went far towards enabling the New York banks to resume specie payments in May of that year. In 1839 Ward helped found and became president of the Bank of Commerce in New York, the first great financial institution to be incorporated under an act passed by the New York legislature in April 1838 allowing associations of individuals to engage in the banking business. He was recuperating from an attack of gout when during a secondary crisis the Philadelphia banks and those in Southern cities suspended specie payments in October 1839. For a fortnight he fought strenuously and successfully to prevent the New York banks from following suit, but the strain proved too great for his enfeebled constitution and he died towards the close of the following month.
In 1830 helped found the University of the City of New York (New York University) of which he was first treasurer. The following year he became the first president of the New York City Temperance Society, and in 1836 he helped finance Stuyvesant Institute, which was intended to be a copy of the Boston Athen'um.
Quick to make up his mind and the soul of punctuality, he disliked circumlocution and indecision in others. After the death of his wife, November 11, 1824, Ward's character underwent a great change. He gave up smoking, became a devout churchgoer, frowned on all fashionable entertainments, and gave freely to good causes. He contributed to the missions and educational institutions of the Protestant Episcopal Church
In October 1812 he married Julia Rush Cutler, by whom he had three sons and four daughters.
