Julia Rush Cutler Ward

Julia Rush Cutler Ward (January 5, 1796 – November 9, 1824) was an American occasional poet. One of her poems is preserved in Rufus Wilmot Griswold's Female Poets of America. Her daughter, Julia Ward Howe, was the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Early life

Julia Rush Cutler was born in Boston, January 5, 1796. She was the daughter of Benjamin Clark Cutler (b. 1756), of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her mother, Sarah Marion Mitchell Hyrne Cutler, was the daughter of Thomas Mitchell and Esther (or Hester) Marion. Julia was the third child in the family. Her siblings included: Mary Ann, Mary Eliza, Rev. Benjamin Clark (of St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn; brother-in-law of General Sir Roger Hale Sheaffe), Charlotte, and Francis Marion.

Julia's maternal ancestors were of South Carolina, and her grandmother was the only sister of the partisan leader, General Francis Marion.

Career In 1812, she married Samuel Ward, a banker of New York City. After marriage, she came to New York City to reside at a time when Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, James Fenimore Cooper, and others, were making their first marks in literature, and her abilities, improved by the best culture, brought into her circle important people of the city. Francis Marion (1820–1847) Louisa Cutler Ward (1823–1897), who married Thomas Gibson Crawford (1813–1857), a prominent sculptor. After his death, she married Luther Terry (1813–1900), an artist. Anne Eliza Ward Maillard (born November 2, 1824)

On a north corner of Broadway stood the Ward house, a plain but dignified structure of brick with white marble trimmings. In 1819, the family lived at No. I Marketfield Street, on the north side, next to the corner of Broad Street. The family moved next to No. 5 Bowling Green, the "Steamship Row" of later days, where they had as neighbors John Hone, Elisha Riggs, and Stephen Whitney.

Ward died November 9, 1824, at her Bowling Green home in New York City a week after her last child, Anne, was born.