Pat Ward - son of Manasseh and Madeline Ward

Pat and Ethel Ward
after their wedding in 1917

Lawrence Keith Stewart Ward was born at ‘Myee’ Gertrude Street Gosford in May 1892, the son of Manasseh Ward and Madeline Geary Henderson.  He was always known as ‘Pat’ except in formal documents. He had three older sisters, Josephine who was 15, Madeline 13 and Amy two. He also had five brothers, William 12, Robert ten, Roy five, Ephraim three and Eric one. Three other brothers had died in infancy.

Pat was one of the younger children in the family and his childhood would have been peppered by the weddings of his older siblings. Josephine married when Pat was four and moved to live with her husband in England. Madeline Jr was next when he was six, followed by Robert when he was 12 and William when he was 13.

The Gosford of Pat’s youth was still a small country town, The railway connection to Sydney had only opened two years before Pat was born and horse transport was still the mainstay until well after Pat started work. His father was a pioneer of the district and heavily involved in the local community. Manasseh was also a superb bushman and raised his children to be able to fend for themselves.

When Pat started work, he followed his father’s original profession, that of a teamster. He built up a team of working horses and worked as a carrier.

In 1917 he married Ethelean (Ethel) Radcliff in Sydney.  They lived in York Street Gosford, near the corner of Frederick Street. There they would raise a family of six children, born between 1918 and 1933. One other child died in infancy.

The horse team was stabled at the home and grazed in paddocks near the house. Pat and Ethel’s son Allen would later write about his father standing on the back landing of their home, calling in the horses, who would lift their heads from their grazing, look towards the house, then walk home through a gate to their individual feed boxes.

The work of the teamster was hard work. The teamster would rise early, well before sunrise, and get the horses ready. The teamster’s wife and children would often help prepare the team, grooming each horse before fitting the harness. The team were trained to work by voice command and the teamster would work them without reins, walking alongside the team. At first, the main source of work was the timber industry, hauling logs and poles from the surrounding bush to the Gosford wharf. Then in 1922 a sandstone quarry was opened and this soon became an important source of work.

The quarry was at the end of a steep hill on Georgiana Terrace, next to the school. Pat would often leave the wagon in the quarry and walk the team home for the night and then walk them back to the quarry in the morning. On such mornings, he was sometimes followed by a group of children on their way to school. The horses would be in a line, each tethered to the one in front with a lead rope. As they arrived at the bottom of the hill, Pat would pause the horses while each child grabbed a handful of horses tail and with a ‘gee-up’ from Pat, the convoy of kids and horses would climb the hill to school and work respectively. 

One haulage job that created huge interest in Gosford at the time was the transport of an 11-ton boiler from the railway yards to the quarry. Hauling 11-tons up the steep incline to the quarry was a huge challenge in the age when horse power was all that was available. Four teams of horses were combined for the pull. In addition to Pat’s team, there was his brother Eric’s team and teams from the Scott brothers and Sid Pink.  

Pat bought his first truck in the late 1920s and by 1930 he was advertising his business as a ‘general Motor Carrier’.  This was at a time when there was no road bridge over the Hawkesbury River. So his trucks were a regular sight on the George and Francis Peat which provided the ferry service across the River near the current M1 freeway bridge. As his children grew, his boys joined the trucking business and ‘Pat Ward & Sons of East Gosford’ was emblazoned on the sides of their trucks

In 1941, Pat’s son Allen was seriously injured in an accident while driving one of the family’s trucks.  This accident marks the beginning of a decline in Pat’s health and some have concluded that despite Allen’s full recovery, his father felt somehow responsible for the accident. After a series of deep depressive episodes, Pat was admitted to hospital where he died in July 1945 aged 53.  He was survived by his wife Ethel, six of his seven children and 10 of his siblings. 

Ethel lived for another 39 years. She died in October 1984 aged 89. She was buried with her husband at St Paul’s Kincumber.