Ferdinand Ward

Ferdinand De Wilton Ward, Jr. (1851–1925), known first as the "Young Napoleon of Finance,"[1] and subsequently as "the Best-Hated Man in the United States," was an American swindler. Ward caused the financial ruin of many people, including famous persons such as Thomas Nast and the former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who had helped him start his banking business.

Background

Ward was born in Geneseo, New York, to the former Jane Shaw and her husband Reverend Ferdinand De Wilton Ward, who had been missionaries in India.

As a young man Ward moved to New York City and in 1880 established the banking and brokerage firm Grant & Ward with investments from Ulysses S. "Buck" Grant, Jr., the son of the President, and from the President himself. Ward ran the company as a Ponzi scheme. The scheme collapsed in 1884, bankrupting Ulysses S. Grant, Sr. and many other investors.

Ward served over six years in New York State's Sing Sing Prison for fraud.

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References
  1. "Son's Gems Claimed By Ferdinand Ward" (PDF). New York Times. 6 April 1909.

Bibliography
  • Ward, Geoffrey C. (2012), A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-44530-2. (The author is his subject's great-grandson.)
  • McFeely, William. Grant: A Biography (NY: WW Norton & Co., 1981), 490–493.
  • Roberts, Russell. "The Wall Street Scandal of Grant and Ward,” Financial History #81 (Spring, 2004), 13–15,
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