Ware, Nathaniel A.

Born: 1781-03-16 South Carolina

Died: 1853-09-18 Galveston, Texas

Nathaniel A. Ware was a teacher, lawyer, territorial secretary, banker, land speculator, economist, and author. He taught school and studied law in the Abbeville district of South Carolina before he moved to Natchez, Mississippi Territory in 1811. During the War of 1812, Ware attained the rank of major, serving as aide-de-camp to territorial Governor David Holmes. He served as the territory's secretary from 1813 to 1817. He also served as acting governor of the territory from April 1815 to May 1816 when Governor Holmes was ill. In 1814, Ware married Sarah Percy Ellis, with whom he had two daughters. He relocated with his family to Philadelphia in 1820, seeking treatment for his wife's postpartum depression, but began traveling extensively by the early 1820s. He invested in property in Mississippi, Illinois, and other areas throughout the country. He also started banking in Natchez, and, by 1838, began writing and advocating for economic reforms. In the early 1840s, he resided in Clinton, Mississippi, but still traveled extensively. In 1844, he wrote his first book, Notes on Political Economy as Applicable to the United States by a Southern Planter, which expressed his Whig views on internal improvements, economic protectionism, and slavery. He also published a work on politics in 1845 and a novel in 1848. He died of yellow fever while traveling.

U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Hinds County, MS, 189; David Gleeson, "Ware, Nathaniel A.," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 22:663; William Diamond, “Nathaniel A. Ware, National Economist,” The Journal of Southern History 5 (November 1939), 511; Gravestone, The Lexington Cemetery, Lexington, KY.