Civil War Union Army Officer. Company A, 3rd New Jersey Militia. He was born in a frame house that stood on the west side of Greene Street, nearly opposite Academy Street. He descended, in the fourth generation, from William Yard, of the county of Devon, in England, who came to America previous to 1700, and was among the first settlers on the tract occupied by the original city of Trenton. His father, Captain Benjamin Yard, was a carpenter, not yet "out of his time," in 1789, when he built the triumphal arch under which Washington passed at his reception in Trenton, when on his way to his inauguration as first President of the United States. His mother was Priscilla Keen, daughter of John Keen, of Holmesburg, Pa., whose ancestors and the ancestors of their connections, the Holmeses and Ashtons of that section, were descendants of the early Baptist emigrants from New England during the persecution of that sect by the New England Puritans. At sixteen years of age he was about to learn his father’s trade when he was thrown from a horse and sustained injuries which, for a time, incapacitated him for that business, when he commenced the study of medicine under Dr. James, T. Clark, and attended the lectures of Dr. McClellan, of Philadelphia. About this time his brother Jacob, who was engaged in the manufacture of brushes in Trenton, while on a visit to New Orleans died suddenly of yellow fever. He was then obliged, reluctantly, to give up the idea of being a physician, and, with his brother Charles, assumed the management of Jacob’s business for his father, and subsequently, after his marriage, purchased it. He soon built up a large and lucrative trade for that period, at one time having as many as forty hands in his employ, and finding a market for his goods throughout New Jersey, and in Pennsylvania along the valley of the Delaware from Easton to Philadelphia. In 1832 the cholera first appeared in Trenton. Of this period Hon. Franklin S. Mills writes, in a recent letter to the Trenton True American: "Captain Yard was a genuine humanitarian, and never passed a sufferer without affording relief. The fearful agonies of the victims of cholera awakened the sympathies of his large heart. Without any appointment, and without compensation, himself, his workmen, his horses and wagons were all given to the work of alleviating the suffering and burying the dead. "Dr. Joseph C. Welling and Captain Yard spent most of their time at the hospital and among the sick and dying, and while his companion, Dr. Welling, was administering medicines, Captain Yard and his men were employed in bringing into the hospital those who were suddenly seized with the disease and removing those who had already died. Kindness and sympathy for the suffering were shining qualities in the character of Captain Yard, and in self-sacrificing devotion to the objects of charity, and especially to the sick and those who had been stricken down by sudden misfortune, he had few equals." He continued to prosper in business, and maintained himself and his family with credit until about the year 1835, when a money crisis caused the failure of his consignee in New York, where he had built up a large trade. This and the war between France and Russia, which interfered with the export of bristles, then principally brought from Russia, obliged him to wind up his business. He sold his tools and machinery, his dwelling and other property, and paid his creditors, and, as he expressed it, he "hadn’t a dollar left." At this time he had a large family to support. In the winter of 1835—36 he was appointed keeper of the New Jersey State Prison, then in the old building now known as the State Arsenal. The new prison was in course of construction. He was also appointed to superintend the completion of the new prison, and for the first time employed the convicts upon that work, making a great saving to the cost of construction. In 1839 he removed the prisoners to the new building, and carried on the work until it was completely finished according to the original plans. In the management of the prison he was entirely successful, returning a surplus of from six thousand to ten thousand dollars annually over the running expenses. In the winter of 1839—40, the Whig party haying a majority in the Legislature, he was removed, but the Democrats having a majority in the election in the fall of 1843, he was reappointed in 1844, and held the office one year, when, the Whigs again succeeding, he was again removed. Upon his first removal, in 1840, he was appointed to take the census of Burlington County, which he successfully accomplished in three months, the time allotted, traveling the whole county on horseback, and visiting in person every family in the county, with the exception of the city of Burlington.
This same year he established the auction and commission business in Trenton, in which he was successful, and was enabled to maintain his family respectably and to give his children such educational facilities as the city them afforded. In politics he was always a Democrat, casting his first vote for President for Andrew Jackson at the election of 1824. He took an active part in what is known as "The Tyler Campaign." The Whig party, under the leadership of Henry Clay, quarreled with Tyler for his veto of the bill to recharter the United States Bank. The Democrats sustained Tyler’s policy, and to lend aid to this movement Mr. Yard purchased the Emporium and True American, and conducted it from 1843 to 1846, but, having no practical knowledge of the business, it did not prove remunerative. The object for which he purchased it having been accomplished, however, he retired from its management and it passed into other hands. He was an earnest and popular speaker, and on several occasions "stumped" the entire State in the interest of the Democratic party.
Upon the accession of Mr. Polk to the Presidency, Mr. Yard was appointed an inspector in the New York custom-house, which position he filled until the breaking out of the war with Mexico, when he sought and obtained a commission as captain in the Tenth United State Infantry. He raised the first company for that regiment, and marched from the city of Trenton within thirty days after receiving his commission with the full complement of one hundred men. In those days this was considered a remarkable success, volunteers not being found as readily as they were in subsequent years. On the way to New York public receptions were tendered to his company at the principal towns in New Jersey through which they passed. He joined General Taylor on the Rio Grande in the spring of 1847, where he remained until the spring of 1848, when, after suffering for several months from the disease incident to that climate, he returned home as the only hope of surviving. After months of illness he recovered. His regiment followed in the fall, when, after their discharge from the service, the non-commissioned officers and privates of the regiment came to Trenton and presented Captain Yard with a gold-mounted sword, bearing an appropriate inscription. The presentation took place at the Mercer County court-house, on the evening of August 31, 1848, and was accompanied by a letter bearing the signatures of over three hundred soldiers. Upon leaving Reynosa, of which Captain Yard was the military governor for several months, the Mexican officials and leading citizens of the town presented him a letter, of which the following is an extract: "He has taken care of the tranquillity and security of our families and of the interest of the town; he has given succor to the poor and attended them in their sickness, and without any other recompense than that which those wish who believe that there is another life." After the recovery of his health he was reinstated in the position in the custom-house, which he relinquished upon entering the army; but shortly after the accession of General Taylor to the Presidency, in 1849, he was removed to give place to a member of the Whig party, notwithstanding the pledges of that party during the canvas that none of the soldiers in the war against Mexico should be removed on partisan grounds. This removal was the occasion of much discussion in Williamsburg, N.Y., where Captain Yard then resided, and especially among the merchants and business men of New York City who had their homes in Williamsburg, many of them being influential members of the Whig party. To show their disapprobation of the removal, they suggested the nomination of Captain Yard for the New York Assembly by the Democrats, promising their support. The suggestion was adopted, and, although the district usually had a reliable Whig majority, Captain Yard was elected. He took a prominent part in the Legislature. He was chairman of the Committee on State Prisons, and also of the special committee "to inquire into the condition of the New York volunteers in the Mexican war, with a view to their relief," many of them being destitute and suffering great privations. During the session of 1850 a bill was passed providing for the erection of a penitentiary at Syracuse, designed to be an intermediate prison between the county jail and the State prison. Upon the recommendation of Captain Pillsbury, of the Albany Penitentiary, Captain Yard was appointed to superintend its erection, and was afterwards appointed its warden. He completed the buildings and carried on the operations of the prison successfully for two years, when he was removed to give place to a political favorite of the Board of Supervisors of Onondaga County, in whom the power of appointment was vested. In 1855, under the administration of President Pierce, he was again appointed to a position in the New York custom house, which he held until the outbreak of the Rebellion, in the spring of 1861. He resided at Trenton at this time, and anticipating the call for troops he, in the morning newspapers of April 15th, issued a call for volunteers. The ranks of his company were filled in a few days and it was the first company raised in the State, and the first in the State to be mustered into the service of the United States. It was named the Olden Guards, in compliment to the then Governor of the State, and was attached to the Third Regiment New Jersey Militia, in General Runyon’s brigadee, and designated as Company A of that regiment. He led the company to the field, and it was the first company from the North to occupy the soil of Virginia, being or the right of the Third Regiment, commanded by the senior colonel of the brigadee, which led the advance. He served with his regiment to the close of its term of enlistment and received an honorable discharge. Subsequently he raised and conducted a company to the field to repel Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania.
The hardships which he had endured in his military campaigns, and the struggles which he had made to maintain his family, now began to tell upon his constitution, and obliged him, much against his inclination, to retire from the active life which he had hitherto led. At the close of the war, his wife having recently died and his children mostly grown up, he removed from Trenton and took up his residence at Farmingdale, with a son and daughter unmarried. Here he engaged in the cultivation of a few acres of land and, in works of charity and religion. He became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Trenton at the age of sixteen years and always remained in the communion of that church. In his early manhood he was active in the service of the church, but in later years the cares of his family and his multifarious business engagements drew him away from its active labors. In his declining years he resumed them and became an active and zealous worker. He was also zealous in the cause of temperance and became prominent throughout Monmouth County in this field of labor. In 1824 he married Mary Woodward Sterling, daughter of John Wesley Sterling, a farmer then residing near Mount Holly, by whom he had eight sons and three daughters, all of whom grew up to maturity except one son, who died at eight years of age. Captain Yard died at his residence at Farmingdale on the 17th of October, 1878, where, on the occasion of his funeral, public honors were accorded to his memory. His remains were conveyed to Trenton, where also public exercises were held. The interment was in Mercer Cemetery. The portrait of Captain Yard which accompanies this sketch, is engraved from a daguerreotype, taken when he was about fifty years of age.