Note: Reverend Ware was a descendant of the fourth generation of Robert Ware, Sr.
“Henry Ware, son of John Ware, was born in Sherborn, Massachusetts, April 1, 1764, and died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 12, 1845, aged eight-one.
He married (first), March 3, 1789, Mary Clark, daughter of Rev. Jonas and Lucy (Bowes) Clark, of Lexington… She was born May 4, 1762, and died at Cambridge, July 5, 1805. He married (second), February 9, 1807, Mary (Otis) Lincoln, daughter of James Otis and widow of Benjamin Lincoln, Jr. She died at Cambridge, February 17, 1807, aged forty-three. He married (third), September 18,1807, Elizabeth Bowes, daughter of Nicholas Bowes, of Boston. She was born May 27, 1776 and died August 30, 1850.
Henry Ware was a feeble-child, but by the help of his mother’s tender care in childhood he acquired a strong constitution in manhood. In his youth he attended school in winter for six or eight weeks and the remainder of the year did the lighter kinds of work on the farm. By the generous aid of his brothers he was fitted for college by the minister of the parish, Rev. Elijah Brown. He entered Harvard in 1781. His college course was full of honors and he delivered the Latin valedictory oration at graduation. He studied for the ministry, teaching the Cambridge in the meantime. He began to preach in 1787 and was ordained October 24, 1787, minister of the First Church of Hingham, Massachusetts. He preached in the Hingham Church for eighteen years and won a place in the first rank of ministers at a time when the best minds and abilities of the people were in the ministry. In 1805, when he was forty years old, he was elected Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard.
His election marked a new era in the history of the Congregational churches in New England. It was vehemently opposed by a faction of the clergy and laymen, on the ground that Mr. Ware’s theology was so liberal a character that is was not right to place him in a professorship intended to inculcate and maintain Calvinistic doctrines… Mr. Ware took no part in the long and bitter controversy following his election until 1820, when, by advice of his friends, he published a reply to ‘Letters to Unitarians’ by Dr. Woods and followed the discussion several years. He took his share in the Sunday pulpit service in the college chapel as well as his regular lectures and teaching. Twice he became acting president.
He also devised in 1811 a course of regular exercises with the students of divinity who remained in Cambridge after taking their college degree and this course developed into the Harvard Divinity School, established 1819. His son, Henry Ware, Jr. became one of the professors in the Divinity School in 1830.
Dr. Ware devoted himself to these varied duties with ability and diligence for more than thirty-five years.
In 1840 he underwent an unsuccessful operation for a cataract on the eye and for the last five years of his life was confined to the house most of the time.
The children of Henry and Mary (Clark) Ware were: Fanny and Julia (twins), born May 17, died May 22, 1790; Lucy Clark, June 6, 1791, died February 10, 1866, at Northboro; married February 3, 1818, Joseph, Allen, son of Phineas and Ruth (Smith) Allen; Mary Cotton, December 3, 1792, died March 29, 1862; married, December 3, 1818, Jairus Lincoln, son of Hawkes and Mary Howe Lincoln, of Hingham (H.C. 1814); Henry, Jr., April 21, 1794, died at Framington, September 22, 1843; John, December 19, 1795, died in Boston, April, 29, 1864, William, August 3, 1797, died a Cambridge, February 19, 1852; Martha, June 2, 1799, died October 21, 1892; Harriet, December 25, 1801, died June 24, 1838; married, October 20, 1826, Rev. Edward Brooks Hall of Northampton, Massachusetts, son of Nathaniel and Joanna Cotton (Brooks) Hall; Martha Ann, April 5, 1804, died April 16, 1805.
The children of Henry and Elizabeth (Bowes) Ware were: Elizabeth Ann, June 9, 1801, died in Roxbury, March 26, 1866; married August 24, 1831, George Putman, son of Andrew and Jerusha (Clapp) Putman; Edward Augustus, December 29, died December 30, 1809; Caroline Rebecca, December 11, 1811, died December 1869, at Newton Lower Falls; married, October 27, 1835, Edward Warren, M.D., son of John and Abby (Collins) Warren…; Charles Eliot, born May 7, 1814, died September 3, 1887, at Winchendon, Massachusetts; Edward Proctor, January 12, 1816, drowned in Charles river, July 13, 1825; Charlotte Louisa, April 12, 1818, died at Cambridge, December 8, 1903, unmarried; George Frederick, February 14, 1820, died September29, 1849, at San Francisco, California (H.C. 1838); Thorton Kirkland, born February 23, 1823; Anne Storrow, March 10 1826, did at Cambridge, October 3, 1896, unmarried.”
Source: Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of Worcester Co., MA, Vol. 4, Ellery Bicknell Crane, The Lewis Publishing Co., 1907, page 13-4
