Irene Briggs was the only child of Benjamin and Abby Briggs.  Her early years were spent near her paternal grandfather and the many aunts, uncles and cousins whose lives were centered around Sharon Center, Ohio.  

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In 1861 Irene accompanied her parents to California.  They traveled by steamship from New York to Panama and by rail to the Pacific coast where another steam ship took them to San Francisco.   Eight-year-old Irene was described as an excellent traveler by her mother.

 

Irene’s mother died in California less than a year later.  Her father, Benjamin Briggs, left Irene temporarily under the care of his sister, Marie Antoinette Briggs, in Marysville, California.  When he decided to pursue medical studies in Europe, Irene accompanied him.  She was enrolled in schools in both Heidelberg and Paris before returning to the United States.  While her father continued his medical education stateside, Irene stayed with her mother’s sister, Caroline Crane, in Crawfordsville, Indiana.  At age 17 she was attending the Western Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio.

 

While in Crawfordsville, Irene met and became engaged to Samuel Lawrence Ward, a student at Wabash College.  They married in 1876 and almost immediately left for a missionary assignment in Persia. Their first-born son did not survive his first year,  but the couple had six more children in Persia.

 

Irene’s poor health brought the family back to the United States in 1895.  Initially the family settled in Ohio, but when Samuel Lawrence Ward was called to lead the church in Glendale, California, Irene found herself near the community of La Crescenta which her father had developed.  Her children, at times, all lived nearby.  Irene died in 1932 at the age of 79.