when he died in 1894, zebulon ward passed on an estate worth some $600,000 to his family, making him a multimillionaire in today's terms. that was the man who kidnapped -- and according to the state of kentucky -- now legally owned henrietta wood. and after he defeated her freedom suit in 1855, he eventually sold her to slave traders who took her down the river to nachez, mississippi. there in one of the largest slave markets in the deep south, wood was bought by a cotton planter who put her to work under brutal conditions in the fields and in his house, a place called brandon hall. and it was there that she gave birth to arthur h. simms who was born, as the chicago tribune later reported, in january 1856, quote, on a farm 11 miles from nachez, mississippi. his mother had been sold to the plantation owner, a man jailed gerard brandon, only a month before his birth. now, wood and simms remained in bondage at brandon hall which remains standing today in this picture here when the civil war began in 1861. but in 1863, as union armies began to close in on the district ready to enforce th