Death Ship.

Of the 41 people who died in Savannah, Georgia in September of 1841, at least 21 died of some sort of fever. One was brought in nearly dead, so we don't know what he died from, and a few more are listed as dying of things which are commonly known to be symptoms of various epidemic fevers. At least 29 were foreigners or merchants. Compared to months previous and following, it's pretty evident that a ship carrying dozens of (probably) yellow fever patients arrived in Savannah at the beginning of September. In the months before and after September, the majority of dead were residents of Savannah, as would be expected in any city's vital records. The causes of death range run the gamut of usual suspects for the time: dropsy, diarrhea, worms, and whooping cough.

Only September stands in stark contrast.

Eight men who died that month worked on ships. This doesn't seem like a huge number until you realize that only 16 of the dead had any occupation listed at all. All but two of those sailors were from the UK. (One was from Bremen, one from India.)

Yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes, not by human contact. Many of the residents who died that month died at home, as was the norm for the day. It wasn't dangerous to treat a yellow fever patient at your residence.

All things considered, it's fairly obvious that William C. Ward was a man who had nowhere else to go when he got sick. He almost certainly did not have a nurse-wife who lived in Savannah while he was a resident of somewhere else.

Did Mary Wallace treat William Ward while working in the Savannah Poor House Hospital? Perhaps she was under societal pressure to name a father of her children. Perhaps little Henry himself was asking his mother about his father, whom he did not know. Perhaps she needed to name a father in order to receive aid from a charity. I have to admit, a dead sailor would be a fantastic person to invent to be the father of your children.