DELAND, Fla. -- A woodcutter who was born into slavery on Christmas Day 1862 and worked until he was 110 years old, has died at the age of 119, relatives said Sunday.

Ike Ward, born on a Virginia plantation, died late Friday. He has only two surviving relatives.

Soon after his birth Ward was moved to Georgia and remained there until the slaves were freed in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. He then moved to Florida where he worked most of his life as a woodcutter.

Ward worked at a sawmill in Bunnell for about five years before he moved to Seville, where he lived and worked the last four decades of his life. Relatives said Ward retired from sawmill work at the age of 110 when he was injured unloading tree stumps from a railroad car.

'Ike used to push a plow in a big backyard garden up 'til about two weeks before he died,' said Rachel Hall, a cousin from Bunnell. 'He used to push it over an acre of land, and he's got a real pretty garden now.'

Ward had a Social Security card that verified his age, said Frank Gilcrease, his only living grandson. The centenarian's wife, Marie, died in 1972.

During President Gerald Ford's adminstration, Ward went to Washington at the request of Florida legislators in Tallahassee to 'speak about the Negro race from slavery times,' Gilcrease said.

'He said his mother and father went under the name of Reddick, but when you get sold into slavery, you had to go under the boss people's name,' he said.

Arthur J. Mack's Funeral Home in DeLand was handling the burial arrangements, although they were incomplete.

'I talked with Ike on Wednesday,' Ms. Hall said. 'The last thing he told me was that he wanted to be buried beside his wife and that he didn't want no flowers.'