JOHN M. WARE, SHUTESTON.--Mr. Ware is a native of Texas, 
born August 7, 1857.  His parents, Henry V. and Martha A.
(Everett) Ware, are natives of Georgia, where they were
reared and married.  The family is of English extraction
on both sides.  Our subject is the youngest of a family
of nine children.  His father removed from Texas to 
New Orleans in 1866, having been one of the pioneer settlers
of Texas.  Here he engaged in a brokerage and commission
business.  After a few years he abandoned this and devoted
himself to the culture of sugar cane in Iberville parish,
Louisiana.  He owned what is known as the "Belle Grove"
plantation, which contained about twenty-one hundred acres
of land.  He was engaged in sugar culture until 1878, when
he sold the plantation to his two sons, John M. and James A.
Ware.  The latter now owns and operates the plantation. 
John M. Ware sold his interest in the plantation in 1879.
Their father was married twice, his first wife being the
mother of our subject.  She died at Long Beach; Mississippi,
in 1878.  The father now resides at Pass Christian.

The subject of our sketch received good educational 
advantages, having attended the Homer College, Louisiana,
and the University of East Tennessee, Knoxville.  He began
life for himself, at the age of twenty-one years, as a planter.
He removed to St. Landry parish, twelve miles southwest of
Opelousas, in 1882, where he bought what is known as the 
"Dixon Grove" plantation, which contains nearly one thousand
acres of very fertile land.  Mr. Ware has given considerable
attention to stock raising, and has on his plantation about
one hundred and thirty head of graded cattle, besides horses,
mules, etc.  The principal products of his plantation are 
cotton and rice.

Mr. Ware commenced the artesian well business in 1887. 
He purchased a steam outfit, and did his first work on
"Evergreene" plantation, three miles below the town of
Plaquemine, the first well sunk in Louisiana above New Orleans.
He has since done work on the Mississippi River, on the 
Teche, on Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Cypremort and in St. Landry
parish.  He organized the John M. Ware Well Company, 1889,
and they now take contracts in different sections of the country.
Mr. Ware is a Democrat in politics."

Source:  Southwest Louisiana Biographical and Historical,
Biographical Section, pp. 88-89. Edited by William Henry
Perrin. Published in 1891, by The Gulf Publishing Company.