Samuel Gray Ward (October 3, 1817 – November 17, 1907) was an American poet, author, and minor member of the Transcendentalism movement. He was also a banker and a co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among his circle of contemporaries were poets and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller who were deeply disappointed when Ward gave up a career in writing for business just before he married.
Contents
Early life
Ward was born on October 3, 1817, in Portland, Maine. He was the son of Lydia Gray (1789–1874) and Thomas Wren Ward (1786–1858), who served as treasurer of Harvard from 1830 to 1842 and was the American agent for London-based Baring Brothers & Co., merchant bank. His brother was George Cabot Ward.
Ward attended Harvard College and graduated along with Transcendentalist poet Jones Very, though the two were not friends. As a student, he boarded for a time with Professor John Farrar and his wife Eliza Ware Farrar. He joined the Farrars on a trip to Europe in the summer of 1836, though he broke from them for private travels to England, Paris, and Rome, before rejoining them in the Swiss Alps by August 1837.