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EBER BROCK WARD Among the financial giants who in the last century began their careers on the Great Lakes none is more remarkable than Eber Brock Ward. The Midas touch was his from the start but his extraordinary vision and love of a life of intense activity made him a truly great man. His parents, Eber and Sally Ward, had left Vermont and were located at Applegath's Mills, Ontario, when on Christmas Day, 1811, Eber Brock Ward was born. From there his parents went, first to Belle River, then to Bois Blanc Island where his father was a lighthouse tender. This was in 1830 and even then the future industrial leader was making money trapping muskrats and salting and smoking fish for the market. Belle River became Newport, (Now Marine City) and here Samuel Ward, an uncle was building and operating ships. On one of these vessels Eber Brock Ward went to work as a cabin boy. His industry and ability as a mariner carried him upward to Master and with a loan of $2000.00 from the uncle, into a partnership in the company, and later its head. Shipping was essential to the development of the region and Eber B. had an eye for the essential. Indeed it may be said that he was better endowed in that respect than any of his contemporaries in the region. He became the biggest shipping man on the Lakes, as well as a builder of ships. There were no railroads and no real highways. The ships had the day and Ward made the most of it. Then the railroads came, and soon he was the President of two of them and on the way out of the shipping industry except for a few which he kept to serve some of his other interests, --lumber and iron. At Wyandotte, Michigan he built blast furnaces and there turned out the first Bessemer steel made in the United States and later in his North Chicago Rolling Mill rolled the first Bessemer steel railroad rail. His stature as an industrialist is indicated in the following list of offices he held besides those mentioned above: President, Wyandotte Rolling Mill Company: Milwaukee Iron Co., Wisconsin Iron Co., Eureka Ironworks. Eureka Mining Co. in Utah, Detroit Copper Co., Arizona, and Louisiana Central R. R. Co., in Louisiana.He was treasurer or the North Chicago Rolling Mill Co., President and Treasurer, American Plate Glass Co., in Missouri, which he founded. He was a Director of the Second National Bank of Detroit? Silver Islet Mining Co., a silver mine on an island in Lake Superior and a smelting company at the same place. In addition to these offices held he owned the Leland Iron Furnace Co., Leland, Michigan. He held interests in the Eureka Silver Mining Co. only a short time, and a lead mine in Missouri, but got out when they did not pay off. His holdings in timber and mineral lands in the Lakes region and fine farming lands in Iowa stood at something like 50,000 acres. A good idea of the extent and value of his holdings may be obtained from his will which filled two fine-print newspaper columns. A conservative estimate put the value at more than $5,300,000.00. Quite a bit over the original $2,000.00 borrowed from his uncle. While at the end he was said to be out of the shipping game, the following vessels were listed as his: LELAND, JOHN A. DIX, E.B.WARD, JR., PLANET, URANUS, VENUS, MARS, MERCURY and HERSCHELL. During his real shipping days his Detroit headquarters were in what we now call the old D&C Building, recently torn down. An interesting incident in his long and varied career has to do with his being instrumental in the foiling of a plot by one James Cooley, to blow up the STR.CITY OF BUFFALO, in 1859* Ward served as a decoy. The boat was in a competing line and Ward's clever acting brought the plotter into the hands of the law. Eber Brock Ward died at the age of 64, on January 2, 1875. Death was caused by apoplexy, his second attack and his grave is in Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit.