Ford married 15-year-old Frances Hambaugh (1812-1850) on September 11, 1828 in Cahokia (in Monroe County, Illinois). They would have five children, but the family was never wealthy. Her father, Henry Hambaugh, was of German descent and had emigrated from Virginia through Kentucky and taught school in Edwardsville for a time before buying a farm in Versailles in 1828; her brother Stephen Hambaugh, also a devout Catholic, had a transport business between Edwardsville and St. Louis before moving to Versailles to farm. The couple had three daughters and two sons, all of whom were orphaned as children and raised by Peoria community members. The eldest daughter, Anna Ford Davies (1834- ), was also the last to die; her sisters were Mary Frances Ford Bailey (1837-1909) and Julia Ford (who died in 1862, 21 years old and unmarried). Their oldest brother, named either Seuel or George Ford (1844-) volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War and lost an arm while fighting with an Illinois regiment, then moved west with his younger brother Thomas (1847-). Thomas was lynched by a Kansas mob alongside an alleged horse thief, and when Seuel (who worked as a bartender due to his disability) tried to have the leaders held accountable, he too was lynched. Ford was accused of taking "stimulants" as governor, some suggesting politics harmed what could have been an important legal career, but while evidence exists as to the parents' ultimately fatal medical conditions, and Ford's less-than-robust constitution even before his gubernatorial term, definitive evidence of drug abuse is lacking.