Right under our noses.

Not so very long ago, a mother's maiden name was almost always given to at least one child as a middle name. Sometimes, every last child would have his or her mother's maiden name as a middle name. This is a beautiful tradition and it's a shame it fell into disuse.

 I digress.

When we were looking for the family of Mary Wallace Ward, we naturally assumed that her son Henry Gleason Ward must have gotten the Gleason middle name from her side of the family. We knew she was from Charleston, so at some point long ago please don't ask me when  we were combing the Charleston records for any sign of Gleasons. Fortunately for us, there was really only one family of Gleasons in Charleston in the 1830s. 

Henry Buel Gleason was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1804. The Gleason family has been in Hartford for a long, long time. As in, they were already living in Hartford when Isaac Newton invented the telescope and Dom Perignon invented champagne. For reasons which aren't exactly clear, in the 1820s, Henry Buel Gleason left the Insurance Capital of the World and headed to the Holy City. There he established a crockery business and seemed to do quite well for himself. 

Elizabeth Paul Milnor was born in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1814 to George Higbee Milnor and his wife Mary Jones Glen. The Quaker Milnor family arrived in Pennsylvania in 1682 and didn't just plant themselves in the Keystone State - they didn't even move out of Bucks County until around 1800 when Joseph Kirkbride Milnor heard the siren song of Trenton, New Jersey and packed his bags. At some point, Joseph's son George, his daughter-in-law Mary, and his young granddaughter Elizabeth Paul Milnor moved to Charleston where Mrs. Milnor's family lived.  It was here that the paths of the Hartford Gleasons and the Bucks County Pennsylvania Milnors would finally cross.  In 1830, Henry and Elizabeth married. 

The Gleasons had daughter Mary in 1834, daughter Anna in 1837, daughter Sarah in 1840, son Francis in 1843, and son John in 1846. A family Bible records they had a few children who died at birth or in infancy, including one male child who died in October of 1836, the same exact month and year Henry Gleason Ward was born. 

Mary Wallace was living in Charleston in 1836 and working as a nurse. Little is known of her whereabouts, but in the 1840 Census a Mary Wallace is listed as a head of household, living with another woman and three male children under the age of five. If this is our Mary Wallace, she must have been taking in unwanted children, perhaps in an official capacity as a nurse. Another woman, Elizabeth Redfern, is living right next door to her at the same time, is head of household, and is caring for three girls and one boy. 

Sometime between the 1840 Census and June of 1841, Mary Wallace moved to Savannah, Georgia. On 4 June 1841, Henry Gleason Ward's sister Julia M. Ward was born in Savannah. 
Three months and one day later, William C. Ward, a 36-year old sailor from Massachusetts, or England, or Connecticut, died of fever in the Savannah Poor House and Sailors' Hospital.