In 1850 Mr. Ward removed to Macon; Mississippi, and there lived till his death in 1887. Early in the fifties he married Miss Emilie A. Whiffen, an estimable and highly cultured young lady of English parentage, then teaching in a female institute at Crawford, Miss. The Philadelphia _Courier_ contained a pleasant notice of the marriage, from which this extract is taken: "We sincerely congratulate our esteemed correspondent, William Ward, Jr., Esq., whose delightful verses have enriched but too seldom our Poet's Corner, upon the agreeable fact reported in our hymeneal department last week." These were his halcyon days, during which he was prosperous and serenely joyful in his home. In 1856, he built in the woods skirting the eastern edge of the town the modest but tasteful little cottage in which he spent the remainder of his days. To verse he seems to have given but little time during those busy years; though occasionally he still contributed a poem to the _Courier_ and to the Macon and Columbus papers. Three daughters and a son came to increase his pleasures and his cares. Meanwhile the war cloud lowered and the tempest broke in fury on the land he had learned to love and call his own. But this was little heeded in comparison with the calamity which befell him in the midst of those dreadful days in the loss of his devoted and helpful wife. His life "cleft in twain," as he expressed it, from that time forward is thus described by one who knew and loved him: "To his half-orphaned children he became father and mother. We have seen him in his cottage home spending his evenings in the bosom of his little family, assisting his daughters with their lessons, amusing the children, looking after their comfort, and doing all in his power to make them happy. Proud and sensitive, he bravely struggled through poverty that came to so many Southern families; and though at times obliged to add the office of housekeeper to that of bread-winner for his young family, he never sank the dignity of a gentleman to the servility of a drudge." Under these circumstances, all the more honor is due to him that after the war he spurned the offers of place and wealth extended by carpet-bag leaders of the Republican party who knew of his Northern birth. Instead of such a course, he became in 1870 editor of the Macon _Beacon_, and was as pronounced a Democrat as he had been Whig in former years. During intervals of work in his little shop he hurriedly wrote his editorials; and might often be seen walking up and down behind the counter evolving a poem or a prose reverie, oblivious to his surroundings. But to poetry he gave no more time than, as he said, he _must_. Outside the joys of companionship with books and with his children, he could truly have exclaimed with Burns: "Lease me on rhyme! it's aye a treasure, My chief, amaist my only pleasure."