From Woodruff and Malad, Malad Valley, Idaho (Jesse born in Snowville, Utah) · earlier England (George Ward’s birthplace)
By the family’s account Joseph W. Ward claimed Lake Canyon and its water in May 1893; his brother Jesse — first cousin of Joseph N. Arbon — worked the land below it from 1896, entered 320 acres there as a desert-land claim in 1901 and received the patent in 1907, wintering first at Woodruff and later at Malad. Jesse’s log home has housed six generations, and Ward, Williams and Estep families descend from them.
Arrived
May 15, 1893 (claim, by the family account); summers on the homestead from March 1896 exact date
Photograph from Jesse Nicholas Ward & Julia Ann MoonDate unknownFOREWORD · THE ORIGINAL ACCOUNT
From the family history
The account first written for this family on ArbonValley.com, kept in full. The chapters after it add what the records and the other family histories tell.
Written by Jacob Andersen1 minute read
About this account · first posted December 30, 2018
Written for the original ArbonValley.com by Jacob Andersen. Memories and documents quoted in the account belong to the people who wrote them. This is the website publication date, not the date of every event described. References to “today” belong to the original account.
The Ward name has been in Arbon Valley since 1893. In that year, Joseph W. Ward applied for both a Possessory Claim on Lake Canyon (directly west of the current Ward farmstead) and water rights in the same area, which at that time was called “Lake Creek” (Bannock Valley, p. 9). Joseph was the older brother of Jesse and George, two other homesteaders in the Bannock Valley.
Jesse and Julia Ward are the ancestors of all the current Ward, Williams, and Estep families in Arbon Valley. You can still see the cabin he built on the current Ward farm (it was moved to its present location in 1949). This cabin is sided in white shingles, but the logs are still underneath the siding. Six generations of the Ward family have lived in this house.
Jesse was nineteen when he came in 1893, too young to file. He cut logs in Lake Canyon and later Knox Canyon, and after the land was surveyed moved his house a mile west. By 1898 the cooperative ditch from Knox Canyon reached the Ward upper fields. Julia milked fifteen cows twice a day and made cheese while the Andersen boys, a mile north-east, watched.
Contemporary records fill in the family’s account. In June 1900 Jesse, a renter and farm labourer, and Joseph, a sheepman, were counted at Cherry Creek east of Malad, and Jesse and Julia’s children were born at Woodruff, several of them in midsummer — so for some years Jesse probably worked the claim seasonally from that base. On May 27, 1901, he entered 320 acres in Sections 34 and 35 as a desert-land claim, which required irrigation and cultivation rather than residence; he proved it on July 19, 1906, and received the patent on September 25, 1907. From about 1907 the family wintered in Malad and summered on the Arbon place: in 1915 the American Falls Press found Jesse and Julia on “their homestead” for most of the summer and back in October to put in the crop. Jesse later sat on the board of the First National Bank of Malad.
Wheat went to Malad over the steep Turkey Trail, and to Collinston, Utah, at forty cents a bushel. Hidden in the Wards’ memories are outlaws on the run, a toddler lost in the rye, and Jesse buried to the hips in a caved-in well. The family account says that Julian Maes, who murdered his neighbour Esther Westcott and then killed himself in January 1915, had named Jesse administrator of his estate; no probate record has been seen.
Elmer Mosiah Ward took over about 1920 (he and his bride Susan moved out to the farm from Malad that May), moving out from Malad each March and back each November until the family’s first truck in 1926. In 1939, by the family’s account, he bought the neighbouring Jerry Baker farm, and in 1949 he and his son Elmer Vance pulled Jesse’s cabin a mile east to it with a crawler tractor.
Elmer and Susan farmed at Arbon until Elmer’s death in 1963. Their son Elmer Vance Ward (1920–2010) and his wife Edith Jones ran the ranch for the rest of the century; their son Vance (1948–2026) farmed with his brother Darrel, bred quarter horses and was probably the Arbon Branch president of the mid-1980s. Elmer and Susan’s daughters Nelda (Mrs. Sod Williams) and Eileen (Mrs. Louie Estep) also made their lives in Arbon. Laurie Jean Ward (Call), whose 1982 book Bannock Valley underlies most of this archive, is the sister of Vance (1948–2026) and Darrel — a daughter of Elmer Vance and Edith Ward.
Earlier: England (George Ward, born 1844; emigrated as a child) (1852). Route drawn only between places named in the family history; the lines are schematic, not trail routes.
England (George Ward, born 1844; emigrated as a child)1852
Willard, Box Elder County, UtahJoseph born 1869
Snowville, Box Elder County, Utahborn 1874
Woodruff and Cherry Creek, near Malad (family base; Jesse married at Woodruff)1870s–1907
17 people of the Ward family on the valley map, household by household, and 2 histories of their own in the archive. Names open their histories; portraits open in the family album.
The homesteaders’ parents
The generation before the valley, who helped their children settle.
Father of Joseph W. and Jesse N. Ward; husband of Eunice Alice Nicholas
More about George
An English-born Latter-day Saint who came to Utah as a child, he lived at Willard and Snowville before settling at Woodruff and Cherry Creek east of Malad, where he patented land in 1879 and 1900. “Grandfather Ward” made Jesse and Julia’s table, washstand and cupboard and gave them a stove for the homestead; a family history says he performed their wedding.
Wife of George Ward; mother of Joseph W. and Jesse N. Ward; sister of Sarah Annette Nicholas Arbon
More about Eunice
A daughter of the Willard pioneer Joseph Nicholas. Her sister Sarah Annette married George Arbon, so her sons were first cousins of Joseph N. Arbon. She bore fourteen children, nine of them living in 1910, when she was a widow heading her own Malad household. A 1969 history names her, with Joseph and Jesse, among the original stockholders of the First National Bank of Malad (1907).
The homesteading generation 2
The men and women who took up land in the valley. Each with the people who married in, and their children below.
Older brother of Jesse Ward; eldest son of George and Eunice Nicholas Ward
More about Joseph
By the family’s account he filed the family’s first claim and water rights on Lake Canyon (“Lake Creek”) on May 15, 1893, when Jesse was too young to file; no record of the claim has been found. A sheepman at Cherry Creek in 1900 and later of Malad, he ran sheep and range with Jesse into the late 1920s; his only patent was a desert claim near Malad (1920). Two of his sons married sisters of Lucille Evans Pett.
Son of George and Eunice Nicholas Ward; first cousin of Joseph N. Arbon
More about Jesse
Plowed 320 acres with a walking plow, hauled wheat over the Turkey Trail, and built the two-story log home six generations have lived in. He married Julia Ann Moon at Woodruff on January 1, 1896. The family’s base was Woodruff and Cherry Creek until about 1907 and Malad afterwards, and Jesse farmed the Arbon place each summer and fall. A prominent Malad Valley farmer and stockman, he was a director of the First National Bank of Malad.
Southern Arbon area, east of Lake Canyon: Jesse N. Ward’s 320-acre desert-land claim (entered 1901, patented 1907), the SE¼ Sec. 34 and 160 acres of Sec. 35, T11S R33E. His two-story log home stood on the original homestead until 1949, when it was moved a mile east to the former Jerry Baker farm.
The former Jerry Baker homestead (NE¼ Sec. 35 T11S R33E, patented 1912), bought by Elmer M. Ward in 1939 by the family’s account; Jesse Ward’s log house was moved here in 1949. The point is the centre of the quarter section; the house site is not pinpointed.
THROUGH THE YEARS
44 dates in the family’s history
Every date the valley map shows when you follow the Ward family, era by era: the most telling of each era first, the rest a click away. Dates keep the sources’ own wording.
Homestead or landFamily historyEventValley firstTragedy
BEFORE 1884 · 4 DATES
Before Homesteading
A Shoshone and Bannock homeland; trails, travelers and cattle range.
1852Family history
George Ward’s family emigrates
George Ward of Melton, Suffolk, came to Utah as a boy with his family in 1852.
By August 1870 George and Eunice Ward and their infant son Joseph were living in the Malad Valley, where the census found them; the Moon family of Jesse’s future wife lived nearby.
George Ward and Moroni Ward, probably his brother, took adjoining land-sale patents at Woodruff on the same day; George added a homestead patent there in 1900. Woodruff was the family’s base for the next generation.
The 1880 census found George and Eunice Ward in the Malad Valley with their sons Joseph, 10, and Jesse, 5, and Julia Moon, 12, in her mother Elizabeth’s household at Malad.
Homesteads, the first ditch, and the first winters.
May 15, 1893Event
Ward claims on Lake Canyon
Joseph W. Ward applied for a possessory claim and water rights on Lake Canyon (then “Lake Creek”), directly west of the present Ward farmstead. His brother Jesse, nineteen, came too; that summer and fall the family cut logs from Lake Canyon and built a small log room, a barn, a cellar and a pole corral.
Southern Arbon area, east of Lake Canyon: Jesse N. Ward’s 320-acre desert-land claim (entered 1901, patented 1907), the SE¼ Sec. 34 and 160 acres of Sec. 35, T11S R33E. His two-story log home stood on the original homestead until 1949, when it was moved a mile east to the former Jerry Baker farm.
1893–1895 (accounts differ); decreed priority July 24, 1897Event
A mile-and-a-half ditch from Knox Canyon
Working together, the settlers dug a ditch about one and a half miles long from the mouth of Knox Canyon to land they held by squatter’s rights. The Davis account dates it to 1893, the Arbon area history to 1894, and the George Arbon biography to 1895. In later years it grew to several miles — about seven by 1906, when Andrew Jenson described it — and its Knox Canyon Creek water right carries a decreed priority of July 24, 1897.
March 1896Event
Jesse and Julia Ward move to the homestead
Married on New Year’s Day 1896 at Woodruff, Jesse and Julia Moon Ward drove cattle, horses, pigs and chickens out from Malad, camping at Ireland Springs; Jesse’s young brother Tommie drove a wagon, and his sister Eunice came out to help that summer. Their first home was a small log room with a dirt floor. Jesse cleared sagebrush and plowed with a walking plow — about five acres a day.
Jesse and Julia Ward’s big log room, built of Knox Canyon logs, turned out to stand on the school section. After the survey it was moved a mile west with Dan Roberts’ help and raised to two stories; their children called it the “Battered Mansion.”
1898 or 1910 (accounts differ); an incorporated company by 1917Event
Arbon Irrigation Company
The Arbon area history dates the Arbon (Valley) Irrigation Company to 1898 — essentially the same organization as the Bannock Valley company, it says, run by the same early homesteaders and later joined by others, including Davis, Bailey, Hawkins, Williams, Ward, Arbon, Bowen, Roderick and Evans. The Edward Davis biography says it was formed in 1910, with Davis a charter member holding fifteen shares. Records show it was an incorporated company by October 1917, when it was on the state’s list of corporations behind in their licence tax, and a 1923 court notice lists three shares of its stock. The two company names have separate federal canal files, so it may have been a successor or a second company.
by 1898Event
The ditch reaches the Ward fields
By 1898 the ditch out of Knox Canyon was several miles long, reaching Jesse N. Ward’s upper fields. Long-time residents later said neither Knox nor Buck Wright Canyon proved a very reliable source of water.
In June 1900 all the Ward households were counted at Cherry Creek, east of Malad: Jesse as a renter and farm labourer, Joseph as a renter and sheepman. The Arbon claim was probably still a seasonal home.
Once the townships were surveyed, the settlers who had squatted on the valley floor since the 1890s filed at the Blackfoot land office. The register dates the first entries: Jennett Daniels Price and Henry Daniels on March 12, 1901, at West Fork, then Donum and Thomas D. Daniels later that month; Charles A. Bailey on March 28, the first on the Arbon floor; D. B. Evans and Julius Abter in April; John Payne’s and Jane Dalton’s desert-land claims in May; Thomas Gibbons, the Bailey brothers, George Arbon, David T. Davis and Jesse Ward’s desert land in late May; D. J. Bowen and J. A. R. Gibbons on June 6 and William Arnn on June 8; the first Summit entries — Joseph T. Wood, Peter Larsen of Mendon and Frederick J. Manning — on July 2; and John C. and Otto Andersen on September 6. Most gave their residence as “Arbon, Oneida.”
The 1910 census found Jesse and Julia’s household, with seven-year-old Elmer, in Malad Village; Joseph’s and their mother Eunice’s households were also in the village.
Jesse N. Ward, giving his residence as Woodruff, entered 320 acres in Sections 34 and 35, T11S R33E, under the Desert Land Act, paying the first 25 cents an acre. A desert-land entryman had to bring water to the land and cultivate it but did not have to live on it — a fit for a family that still made its home near Malad. He made his first yearly proof in August 1902.
On July 19, 1906, Jesse N. Ward received the final certificate on the 320-acre desert-land claim he had entered in May 1901 (Secs. 34–35 T11S R33E), having shown the required irrigation and cultivation; the patent followed on September 25, 1907. Joseph N. Arbon proved up the same year; his desert-land patent is the serial just before Jesse’s.
A new county, roads and phones — and the first departures.
January 24, 1915Event
Murder of Esther Westcott and suicide of Julian Maes
On Sunday January 24, 1915, after a quarrel, Julian Maes, a homesteader at the north end of Summit, shot and killed his neighbour Esther Westcott, who held a homestead nearby, and then shot himself; he died about an hour later. She left two young children. The archive adds that he shot her as she ran across a field, that her children ran to neighbors for help and that both bodies were taken to the Davis store, and it says Maes left a note naming Jesse Ward administrator and leaving his land to her children, who were sent to their father in Nebraska; those details are not in the one contemporary report.
The South Arbon column reported that Mr. and Mrs. J. N. Ward spent most of the summer on their farm, went back to Malad in September, and came out again in October while Jesse put in his crop.
The Arbon column of the American Falls Press reported that “Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Ward moved out to their farm last week from Malad.” Elmer, single at his parents’ Malad home in January, had married Susan Irene Thomas that spring; the young couple took over the Ward place, wintering in Malad and farming at Arbon from March to November.
The former Jerry Baker homestead (NE¼ Sec. 35 T11S R33E, patented 1912), bought by Elmer M. Ward in 1939 by the family’s account; Jesse Ward’s log house was moved here in 1949. The point is the centre of the quarter section; the house site is not pinpointed.
A seventeen-day storm alternated south winds with west blizzards; families were snowed in from the day after Christmas until March 22. Mail was flown from Pocatello and dropped in a field, rural carrier Sod Williams delivered it on horseback, and hay was airlifted to ranchers who could not reach their stacks.
Show 4 more from these years
1939Family history
Elmer buys the Jerry Baker farm
By the family’s account Elmer Ward bought the neighbouring Jerry Baker farm in 1939; it became the Ward headquarters.
Elmer Mosiah and Elmer Vance Ward pulled Jesse’s homestead cabin a mile east with a crawler tractor to the former Jerry Baker farm, now the Ward headquarters, where six generations have lived in it.
Fewer, larger farms; descendants on the old homesteads.
April 1950Family history
Three young families at Arbon
The 1950 census found Elmer Vance Ward’s household at Arbon alongside those of his sisters Nelda Williams and Eileen Estep, while Jesse and Merl Ward lived in Malad.
With fewer families in the valley, the Arbon Ward was disorganized and continued as the Arbon Branch — in April 1951, according to the Church History Library’s unit records, though a stake president still spoke of “one ward at Arbon” that September. The archive names Joe Arbon, Willard J. Andersen and, from 1967, David Wayne Lusk among the branch’s presidents, and a Branch President Vance Ward — probably Vance E. Ward — conducted funerals in 1984 and 1987.
Vance Elmer Ward
1954Family history
Missions for Elmer and Susan
Elmer and Susan Ward served a short-term mission in Texas and Louisiana, and their son Darrel served in the Southern States.
Laurie Jean Ward (Call), probably Elmer Vance’s daughter, compiled Bannock Valley (1982), the local history whose Ward chapter was written by Julia Ward, Elmer Vance Ward, Eileen Estep and Nelda Williams.
At the time of the archive’s accounts (2018–2019)Event
The valley the homesteaders made
The whole valley is now called Arbon. Of its four post offices (the accounts say five) one remains, in Pauline; instead of ten schools, Arbon Elementary teaches grades K–6 in two classrooms. The accounts name families still farming and ranching on or near the original homesteads, including Andersen, Bradley, Evans, Hayden, Hess, Jenson, Lusk, Swim, Ward and Williams.
Snowed in from the day after Christmas to late March, the valley got its mail and hay by air, and Nelda Williams waited through a night of blizzard for her husband to come home.
undated (“one spring after we moved out to the homestead”)
By the family’s account, Joseph W. Ward’s May 15, 1893, possessory claim and water rights on Lake Canyon (“Lake Creek”); no record of the claim has been found.
IRRIGATION
End of the first ditch
By 1898 the Knox Canyon ditch reached Jesse Ward’s upper fields; Ward was among the Arbon Irrigation Company names.
FARMING
A desert-land claim on the south floor
Jesse N. Ward entered 320 acres in Secs. 34–35 T11S R33E under the Desert Land Act in 1901 and proved its irrigation and cultivation in 1906; the patent followed in 1907, one of several desert-land patents on the Arbon floor that year.
CHURCHES
Arbon Branch president
“Branch President Vance Ward” of the Arbon Valley LDS Branch conducted funerals in 1984 and 1987 — probably Vance Elmer Ward.
THE FAMILY ALBUM
Photographs
Portraits and family groups first. Each opens with its caption, date and where it came from.
Everything above comes from the archive’s family histories and the public records the valley map checked them against. Where accounts disagree, the page says so rather than choosing silently.
Where the accounts differ
Joseph W. Ward’s May 15, 1893, possessory and water claim rests only on Bannock Valley page 9; the Oneida/Power possessory-claim record has not been searched (probable; see ‘Where the sources disagree’).
Whether Julia and the children spent whole summers on the claim before 1907 rests on her memoir; in several summers the children were born at Woodruff (probable seasonal pattern).
The 1939 purchase of the Jerry Baker farm rests on the family account; no deed has been seen (probable).
Who performed the 1896 wedding is not known (see ‘Where the sources disagree’).
Which “school section” the 1896–97 house first stood on, and when “after the survey” it was moved, are unresolved.
The family map’s Ward circle sits south-west of the Andersen circle; Julia Ward wrote that the Andersen boys lived about a mile north-east.
Jesse N. Ward’s federal title was a desert-land entry (entered May 27, 1901; final certificate July 19, 1906; patent September 25, 1907; 320 acres: SE¼ Sec. 34 and 160 acres of Sec. 35, T11S R33E), not a homestead. Joseph N. Arbon’s desert-land patent is the serial just before Jesse’s.
The family’s base until about 1907 was Woodruff and Cherry Creek (1896 marriage record; June 1900 census); from about 1907 the household wintered in Malad (1910 and 1920 censuses) and summered on the Arbon place (American Falls Press, 1915).
Joseph W. and Jesse N. Ward were brothers (1880 census; obituaries). The cousin was Joseph N. Arbon: the Wards’ mother Eunice Alice Nicholas was a sister of Sarah Annette Nicholas Arbon. The index page’s “older brother of Jesse and George, two other homesteaders” has no adult brother George behind it (see ‘Where the sources disagree’).
Other kin, not given records here: Jesse’s brother Arthur M. Ward, whose daughter Thelma married Glen Price in 1941 (probably of the West Fork Price family); Joseph W.’s sons Joseph Jr. and John Moroni, who married sisters of Lucille Evans Pett; Merl Ward’s daughter Betty Jean, who married Boyd Van Horn of an Arbon farm family (1946); Jesse and Julia’s grandson Eldon, whom they raised from 1944.
Not the same people: Elmer Mosiah’s son Darrel Nicholas Ward (1934–1962) and Elmer Vance’s son Darrel (living); a Box Elder footballer named Elmer Ward; a Joseph W. Ward of Willard who died about 1921–22.
Laurie Jean Ward (Call), the author of Bannock Valley (1982), is the sister of Vance Ward (1948–2026) and Darrel, not Vance’s daughter: her sister Linda Lee Ward Davis’s obituary names Linda’s siblings as Vance, Darrel, Arlene Colling and Laurie Call, the five children of Elmer Vance and Edith Ward. The archive’s owner confirmed this, and her authorship of the book, in October 2026.
