Ward-Coates Home
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark
From La Ward, take US 172 S. about 6 miles, then go E over cattle guard about .3 miles - house is visible from road.

Lafayette Ward
 

Ward-Coates Home

Built in 1860s by Lafayette Ward, Sr., a pioneer rancher who came from Missouri to Texas, 1836. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.
 

Courtesy of Texas Historical Commission and The Portal to Texas History
 

L. Ward, Sr. - Coates Home

Behind this beautiful old ranch house, on the banks of the Carancahua Bay, lie the remains of Mr. and Mrs. Lafayette Ward, Sr. and some of the descendants. On his monument it says that he came to Texas (Jackson County) in 1836 and was "tried and true." As to the date of the building of this house, it has always been said that "It was started the year or years before "Grandpa" died and "Grandma" had it finished. Lafayette, "Lafy" or "L." as he was most called, died in March of 1862, taking very ill at the home of his friend, Clark L. Owen, the Civil War colonel who was killed the first day of the Battle of Shiloh. He left a large estate consisting of land, cattle, etc. He held many slaves and he asked that they be divided among his daughter, Maria Ward McChesney, and his other minor children. Agnes, later married Mitchell, Lafayette, Jr., Ruth married Stapp and Susan married Coates. The home was left to his wife and minor children. All of the land, cattle, slaves, horses and good management laid the foundation for the vast Ward holdings in that section of the state. Several of his brothers and finally in later years, his mother came from Missouri to settle along the Carancahua Bay, all of them owners of lovely homes, especially for that day and time.

Lafayette, Jr. bought the old Shanghai Pierce home north of the home place, B. Q. Ward, a brother, owned old Crescent V that was located across the bay on the east, accessible now by causeway over Highway 25. Another brother, Russel Ward I, had large holdings near the Navidad River in the northern part of the county. A sister, Mrs. J. D. (Susie Ward) Ewing, owned the ranch where the Weeds now reside. The Ben Wards had a place near the Ewings on the bay and Old Grandmother Eleanor Shannon Ward had her home a short distance southwest of Highway 35 near the causeway. All of this is to emphasize that there is now only one of the old homes left of all the old time Ward Ranch homes.

Fire and hurricanes have taken the others. Fire destroying the old three-story Shanghai Pierce-Lafayette Ward II and III home last year and hurricanes wiped the land clean of the old Crescent V house.

Susan Ward Coates and her husband, Henry C. Coates, a New Yorker who became L. Ward's cowboy in the early days, have had this home in their possession for lo, these many years. When the children were old enough for further education, they moved to Edna into a beautiful home. Agnes Coates, Henry and Thomas Lee, for whom the local chapter of Veterans of Foreign wars was named have all gone on. Miss Susie Coates now resides in a hotel in San Antonio, Texas. She still owns large holdings in the bay section, along with the old home place, keeping it in almost perfect order, as she does her home place here, her second home, Edna.

The Fletchers live in the ranch home and have for many years, taking as much pride in it that you would think that it was their own.

This place is accessible to the public, located about 20 miles below Edna on the way to the bay, a few miles from Highway 35, where Highway 172 intersects, near Midway.

Submitted with historical marker application in 1965