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Edmund Asa Ware (December 22, 1837-September 25, 1885) was an American educator and the first president of Atlanta University, serving from 1869 to 1885.
Ware, son of Asa B. and Catharine (Slocum) Ware, was born December 22, 1837, in North Wrentham, now Norfolk, Mass, and entered College from Norwich, Connecticut, to which place his family had removed about 1852. He graduated from Yale College in 1863. For the two years next after graduation he taught in the Norwich Free Academy, where he had had his early education.
In September, 1865, he went to Nashville, Tennessee to assist in reorganizing the public schools, and thence a year later to Atlanta, Georgia, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association, as Superintendent of the Association's schools in that city and vicinity In December, 1866, he was licensed to preach, and from that time preached more or less frequently. He received August 1, 1867, from General Howard, the appointment of State Superintendent of Education for Georgia; and while thus acting interested himself in the establishment of an institution for the higher education for African-Americans. He thus became the President of the Board of Trustees as well as of the Faculty of the Atlanta University, which was chartered in 1867, and opened in 1869; and the remainder of his life was spent in its service.
He had lately returned from a visit to the mountains, to prepare for the opening of the school, and appeared in usual health; on the afternoon of September 25, 1885, he died suddenly of heart disease, in Atlanta, in the 48th year of his age.
He married November 10, 1869, Sarah J. Twichell of Plantsville, Connecticut, who survived him with three daughters and one son. One of their daughters, Olive, was married in 1912 to Percy Williams Bridgman, recipient of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics.