Family

The Ward Family comes from Owensboro, Kentucky, a town in western Kentucky of about 57,000 people that sits on the Ohio River. While Mike Ward wasn’t born in Owensboro, his siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and many cousins were from the Owensboro area. Each year, Mike’s family traveled to Owensboro to visit with family and to see the old homestead. These visits included a lot of quality time with his aunt “Ozzie”, known to others as Margaret Mitchell, who enjoyed showing Mike how to play marbles the old-fashioned way and aunt “Johnny Mae” Carroll, wife of William Carroll, known for her fabulous cook-outs. Some consider Owensboro the barbeque capital of the U.S. and Ward family visits to the town wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to a local eatery for mutton and burgoo. Given the family’s close connection to Owensboro, the town in many ways felt like home to Mike and still feels that way to the rest of his family.

One of the most treasured Ward family traditions was the personal scrapbook prepared by Aunt Ozzie for each of the Ward children. Many of the items presented on this website were obtained from the scrapbook Aunt Ozzie prepared for Mike Ward.