Joseph Thomas Ward
(Person)

Farmworker, bookseller and stationer, astronomer.

A crowded window display in the new (1911) premises of bookseller and stationer Joseph Thomas Ward in Victoria Avenue, Wanganui, photographed by Frank J. Denton. Ward had earlier run a circulating library in Taupō Quay premises, established in 1896, but his biography in Volume 3 of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (1996) reveals that his strongest abilities were as an astronomer of some note and also as a violinist. In the early 1990s Wanganui was home to New Zealand's earliest bookshop still trading under its original name: H.I. Jones, also in Victoria Avenue, was established in 1860. (F.J. Denton Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ, reference number G-16860-1/1-)

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