Family history of the Wards of Ayton

Little is known of the early years of the Ward family though we know that they came from Ayton about ten miles from Scarborough. The area is predominantly rural. Ayton is a small village built on a gently sloping ridge above an agricultural plain.

The first Ward to live in Leeds was William Ward (b.1787) who set up a firm of solicitors in Leeds as a young man.

The first Ward to enter the medical profession was John Bywater Ward who moved to Oxford in 1872 as Superintendent at Warneford Asylum.

Details of individuals

see Biographies

Missing links

The family history has not mentioned any relationship to William Ward the innkeeper of the Bull and Mouth in Briggate, Leeds. He is first mentioned in the Leeds Directory of 1800. The inn was always connected with the road, and for years before it became a coaching house, when it was known by the sign of the Old Red Bear, it was one of the centres for the heavy luggage wagons.

The first coach that was worked from the Bull and Mouth was the Loyal Duncan...This was in the year 1800, and the house was then kept by William Ward, whom firmly established it as a coaching house...

[source: The Old Coaching Days in Yorkshire, T Bradley, pub.1889]

William and Elizabeth Ward, an innkeeper of Briggate, had a daughter Sarah b.15th November 1815. She was baptised at Leeds Parish Church on 10th January 1816 on the same day as William Sykes Ward. Was this a coincidence or a family affair?

[source: Parish Church baptismal records held at Leeds Central Library- viewed by David O'Carroll]