WARD COUNTY (Judicial). Ward County, established for judicial and other purposes on January 19, 1841, included the northern portion of present Wharton County and a small portion of present Colorado County. The case of Stockton v. Montgomery (1842), in which Montgomery was a resident of Ward County but a voter in Colorado County, was appealed from the Colorado County courts to the Texas Supreme Court, where Judge Anderson Hutchinson rendered an opinion that declared all judicial counties unconstitutional because they were not represented in Congress. Ward County was abolished by this decision. Present Ward County, in West Texas, was not established until 1887.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Wilmer Dallam, A Digest of the Laws of Texas (Baltimore: Toy, 1845). Hans Peter Nielsen Gammel, comp., Laws of Texas, 1822–1897 (10 vols., Austin: Gammel, 1898).
