Annie Wade Young was born on October 18, 1880, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second of four daughters born to Edward Davis Young Sr. and Flora Harrison Wade. Tragically, when Annie was just two years old, her mother died after giving birth to twins—Harriet and Elizabeth—who did not survive infancy. The couples’ first child was stillborn.

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When Annie was five, her father married Flora’s sister—another Annie—who had cared for the motherless girl since Flora’s death. This marriage brought two younger half-siblings into Annie’s life: Flora Wade Young and Edward Davis Young Jr.

 

Annie’s family owned a large home in Wickliffe, Ohio, where they spent the farming season, while winters and school months were spent in Cleveland, roughly 15 miles away. She graduated in 1903 from the Tucker School of Expression in Cleveland.

 

In 1900, the Rev. Samuel Lawrence Ward became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Wickliffe. During his tenure there, the Youngs and the Wards forged a close friendship. That bond was solidified on June 15, 1905, when Annie married Benjamin Briggs Ward (nicknamed “Ben”), son of Rev. Ward, in Wickliffe.

 

After their wedding, Annie and Ben lived briefly in Wickliffe while he finished his medical degree at Case Western Reserve University and completed his hospital training in Cleveland. Their first child, Benjamin Briggs Ward Jr., was born in Wickliffe in 1907. Shortly thereafter, Annie and Ben moved to Painesville, Ohio, where their daughter, Annie Irene, was born in 1909.

 

Meanwhile, Ben’s parents and siblings had moved to California in 1905, encouraging the young family to join them. Annie was initially reluctant to make the cross-country journey with two small children, but when baby Annie Irene was six months old, she did so. They stayed with Ben’s family in Glendale before living briefly in Sacramento and Lathrop. By 1914, Annie and Ben settled at 311 N. Maclay in San Fernando, California—a home Annie would keep for the rest of her life.

 

In 1916, Annie and Ben welcomed their third child, Edward Davis Ward. Soon after, in 1918, Ben joined the U.S. Army Reserves medical corps. Ben was away from home for a long nine months, and Annie shouldered the household responsibilities in San Fernando. When she was overwhelmed with the flu during the 1918 pandemic, her doctor insisted that she needed help at home. Happier days followed. In 1920, her father Edward Sr., her stepmother/aunt Annie, and half-sister Flora also moved to California, conveniently settling in a house across the street.

 

Active in church and local organizations, Annie often led social groups and followed her stepmother’s and half-sister’s footsteps in joining the Daughters of the American Revolution, based on the Revolutionary War service of her great-grandfather, David Everett Wade.

 

In 1922, Ben spent six months studying in Europe, leaving Annie once again to manage the household. Upon his return, he resumed his medical practice. It was during this time that Ben treated a two-year-old girl who had survived a house fire; the child’s mother had died of a gunshot wound. Annie nursed the little girl back to health. When the girl’s father asked if Ben and Annie would adopt his daughter, they agreed, and in 1925 officially renamed her Flora Young Ward.

 

The separations caused by Ben’s military service and travels may have helped prepare Annie for a more permanent loss. In 1926, Ben began exhibiting the symptoms of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Despite every effort to treat him, he passed away in 1929, leaving Annie a widow at 49 years old. At that point, Benjamin Jr. and Annie Irene were already in college, but Annie still had to care for the two younger children, Edward and the newly adopted Flora.

 

Over the following decades, Annie continued to encourage her children’s independence and talents. Grandchildren began arriving in 1932. She traveled to Washington, D.C., to visit Edward, took trips to New York with her daughter Annie Irene’s family, and went to Phoenix in 1945 to help when granddaughter Shirley was born.

 

Annie remained an enthusiastic letter writer throughout her life. Facing a recurrence of breast cancer, she drafted what amounted to a health-care directive, writing in April 1950:

 

“If a person is young enough to recover from the shock of an operation and it renews life so an individual is capable of work and care of themselves and others, it is worthwhile. On the other hand, if one has lived their three score and ten and has properly functioned during these years but is now getting more mentally and physically so that they stand a good chance of not recovering from shock, and nine chances to one the operation will only prolong their existence and cause them to be a burden to themselves and all whose lives they touch. It is much better for all persons concerned to go quickly if possible than to linger on and on. I do not believe in trying to prolong life beyond usefulness. Many believe that as long as there is life, there is hope. But hope for what? Life is not life if one is dying by inches.

 

“I pray not to be a burden. A.Y.W. April 1950”

 

On October 23, 1953, Annie passed away in San Fernando at age 73. She left behind a legacy of resilience, community leadership, and devotion to her growing family

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