Ward Cheney

Background

Ward Cheney was born on February 23, 1813 in Manchester, Connecticut, United States, the sixth of nine children born to George and Electa (Woodbridge) Cheney.

Education

Cheney attended the village school.

Career

At the age of fifteen Cheney left for Providence, Rhode Island, where for the next six years he worked in the capacity of clerk for his brother, Charles, who was partner in a dry-goods firm in that city. Here the young man mastered the rudiments of business. In 1834 Charles Cheney moved to a farm in Ohio, and Ward returned to South Manchester. When he arrived at the family homestead he found several of his brothers experimenting with the moms multicaulis tree, a variety of the mulberry, which appears to have been first introduced in America in 1826.

During the thirties there was a mania for the raising of this type of mulberry and into the speculation the Cheney brothers plunged headlong. Their nursery at South Manchester proving successful, Ward, with his brothers, Frank and Rush, leased a farm in 1836 at Burlington, New Jersey, where they operated a nursery and cocoonery until 1841. By the latter date the boom had collapsed and with it the hope of profitably producing raw silk in America. Fortunately while the boom was at its height, four of the brothers, Ralph, Ward, Rush, and Fred together with Edward Arnold, had organized in 1838 the Mount Nebo Silk Manufacturing Company at South Manchester with a capital stock of $50, 000.

With the collapse of the Burlington project, Ward returned to South Manchester, where he devoted the remainder of his life to the manufacture of silk. The early years were difficult ones and “the mechanical genius of Frank Cheney and the business acumen of his brother Ward, seem to have been largely responsible for the survival of the business”. As the industry developed each of the brothers specialized in some branch, Ward not only looking after the financial end but devoting himself to a study of silk-dyeing, the fundamentals of which he learned from Edward Valentine of Northampton. When the organization was incorporated in 1854 as Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company, Ward became president, serving until his death in 1876. His administration was progressive, and immense strides were made not only in enlarging the units already in operation but in developing such new lines as the manufacture of ribbons and grosgrains.

During the Civil War the Cheneys financed a gun factory in Boston where Christopher W. Spencer, one of their mechanics who had invented a repeating rifle, turned out 200, 000 rifles for the Federal government.

Achievements

• Ward Cheney was prominent pioneer silk manufacturer. He was one of the founders of the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company, an organization which had a longer continuous history than any other similar enterprise in the United States.

Personality

Cheney was not only a man of great executive capacity and business ability, but was endowed with a splendid physique, a vivid personality, and warm human sympathy.

Quotes from others about the person

• "It was the constant delight of this remarkable man to minister to the happiness and prosperity of his thousand employees. Their homes, the facilities for education and religious improvement, their amusements, all had his sympathetic, practical interest. There was nothing he would not do for them, even to nursing their sick, and laying in the grave with his own hands the body which others, fearing contamination, were unwilling to touch”. - William Alfred Hinds

Connections

Cheney married Caroline Jackson, by whom he had three children.

Father:

George Cheney

Mother:

Electa (Woodbridge) Cheney

Spouse:

Caroline Jackson

Brother:

John Cheney

Brother:

Seth Cheney

References

• Connecticut Biographical Dictionary