SAMUEL WARD, fifth child of Governor Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island, and Anne Ray, was born at Westerly in that Colony, Nov. 17, 1756. Samuel was educated at Brown University, in Providence, and was graduated there, with high honors, in 1771. On the 8th of May, 1775, he received a commission as Captain of a Company to be raised in Kings and Kent Counties, R.I.. The second commission as Captain, dated July 1st, 1775, assigned Captain Samuel Ward to the Twelfth Regiment, commanded by Colonel Varnum. Captain Ward was one of two hundred and fifty of the Rhode Island troops, who volunteered (under Lieut.-Colonel Christopher Greene) to join Colonel Benedict Arnold's command of, altogether, eleven hundred men, directed to join Gen. Montgomery at Quebec. On the 1st of January, 1777, Captain Ward was promoted Major in the First Regiment from Rhode Island. He participated in the Battles of Red Bank and Rhode Island. On the twelfth of April, 1779, Samuel was commissioned Lieutenant-Colonel, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Lieut.-Col. Comstock. Beginning of January 1780, Lieut.-Colonel Ward was ordered on detached duty to Providence, to take command of a Light Corps, previously commanded by Colonel Barton. On the first day of January, 1781, Samuel retired on half pay.
from:
Ward, John. A Memoir of Lieut.-Col. Samuel Ward, First Rhode Island Regiment, Army of the American Revolution; with a Genealogy of the Ward Family. New York: Privately printed, 1875. [Reprinted from New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, 6 (July 1875), pp. 113-128.