Ebenezer Ward

Ebenezer Ward (4 September 1837 – 8 October 1917) was an Australian politician and journalist. He was a member of the South Australian House of Assembly from 1870 to 1880 and from 1881 to 1890, representing Gumeracha (1870–1880), Burra (1881–1884) and Frome (1884–1890). In 1890 he switched to the South Australian Legislative Council, where he represented Northern District until 1900. He was Minister for Agriculture and Education under James Boucaut from 1875 to 1876 and under John Colton from 1876 to 1877. As a journalist, Ward variously worked for the Morning Post in England; in Melbourne, for The Herald and Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, and The Age; and, in Adelaide, for The Advertiser and the Daily Telegraph, where he served a stint as editor. He subsequently established a series of regional newspapers: Southern Argus in Port Elliot, the City and Country, the Northern Argus in Clare, a newspaper at Gumeracha, and The Farmers' Messenger. History Ebenezer Ward was born the eldest son of the Rev. Joseph Ward, a member of an old English family, at Russalls, Mersey Island, Essex. He was educated at Dumpton Hall, a school established for the sons of Baptist ministers, near Ramsgate, Kent. It was intended that he join the ministry but in 1849 he rebelled and decamped for London. He found work as a copy boy at a large printing office in Lincoln Inn Fields. It was during his short stay there that Ward acquired his appreciation of Shakespeare while checking proof sheets which they were printing for Routledge. He next worked for the Morning Post as a reader's boy at 15/ a week. He was promoted to reader, then reviser, and eventually a member of their reporting staff in the gallery of the House of Commons and became proficient in shorthand. He won the confidence of his employers, and at age eighteen he was working with the proprietor's son, Algernon Borthwick, with whom he maintained a long correspondence. Ward left the Morning Post in 1856 after inheriting some money, and returned to Essex for three years, living the life of a country squire. In 1859 Ward migrated to Australia in the clipper The British Trident, (among fellow-passengers were South Australian pastoralist Peter Waite and Sir Frederick Pottinger). On arrival in Melbourne in June 1859, he was recruited by George Collins Levey initially as a reader then parliamentary reporter for The Herald.