"A Case Without Parallel": The Sensational Battle over Eber Brock Ward's Will and Subsequent Legacy of Detroit's First Great Industrialist

THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 39:2 (Fall 2013): 77-103.©2013 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. “A Case Without Parallel”: The Sensational Battle over Eber Brock Ward’s Will and Subsequent Legacy of Detroit’s First Great Industrialist by Justin Wargo Detroit businessman Captain Eber Brock Ward1 was touted as the industrial colossus of the Old Northwest following his death on January 2, 1875. Regionally, a majority of his contemporaries would have agreed with the assertion of one of Ward’s many admirers who stated, “He did more to open up this western country than any ten men in it.” While Ward’s local significance was certainly recognized after his death, also acknowledged was that his loss had ramifications beyond the Great Lakes region. “Through his great enterprises his name has become familiar to the Northwest, and, indeed, all the land. He belonged to the whole country by virtue of the fact that he labored throughout a long and useful life to build up American industries,” declared the Chicago Inter Ocean in reporting the news of Ward’s death. Nationally, Ward was memorialized as “a remarkable and noteworthy man in an age when men of achievement were numerous,” and as “a pioneer in four of our greatest fields of industrial activity, namely, water and rail transportation, lumber, and the manufacture of steel and iron.” Additional tributes noted that he was “a genius [who] deserves to be ranked as one of the ‘Real Builders of America,’” or that Ward had “the enterprise of Vanderbilt, with more vigor and a larger brain,” and that “He had no business peer in the great Northwest.” There is an underlying assumption in these memorials that implies Ward was so successful and significant that commemorations of him were largely unnecessary. No statue of or physical tribute to Ward would ever be needed because, it was thought, “The great work performed by Mr. Ward remains to the country in the form of the mammoth manufacturing establishments he has built up. They are his fitting monuments.” In short, the assumption 1 Ward was referred to as Captain due to his role as skipper for a number of E. B. & S. Ward steamers as well as his position as a leading industrialist (a captain of industry). 78 The Michigan Historical Review that Eber Brock Ward would be permanently esteemed was initially taken for granted.2 The notable achievements of Ward’s lifework are extensive. He had already made his mark on the Great Lakes region by 1835, at the age of twenty-three, through a partnership with his uncle, Samuel Ward. The two men built and captained dozens of ships and steamers out of Newport (modern Marine City), Michigan, under the banner E. B. & S. Ward, largely offering combination routes that linked mid-nineteenthcentury points of interest not yet connected by rails and exporting the region’s raw materials. In 1850, Eber Brock Ward relocated his young family from Newport to Detroit, where he purchased “perhaps, the most handsomest residence in the city, with ample grounds and conservatories” at 807 W. Fort Street. After emerging as the “steamship king of the Great Lakes,” Ward “flung aside his prestige, sold most of his fleet, built furnaces and rolling-mills, and became the first of the steel kings.” In 1865, Ward rolled the first steel rails produced in America at his Chicago ironworks, prompting Henry Bessemer later to recognize him as the earliest industrialist to appreciate the pneumatic process. Unlike the majority of successful businessmen of the era, most of whom focused on and attempted to dominate one specific industry, Ward valued diversification; he invested his vast capital in vessels, timberlands, ironworks, railways, and numerous and varied mining enterprises. After amassing the foundation of his fortune by midcentury , Ward began to engage in additional undertakings that expanded his power beyond industry and extended his influence outside the Great Lakes region.3 2 Paul Leake, History of Detroit: A Chronicle of its Progress, its Industries, its Institutions, and the People of the Fair City of the Straits, vol. 3 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1912), 1234 (first quotation); Chicago Inter Ocean, January 3, 1875, 1 (second quotation); “Real Builders...