All My Ancestors

Here is the information I’ve extracted on Ball and Green families living in Baltimore according to the Baltimore City Directories I’ve been able to locate online.

It’s not telling me much that guides me to the “right” Green family yet. But it’s a start. My approach to solving this problem is to acquaint myself with the area–and this tells me how many Green families there were living in Baltimore around the time that Ann Pamela Green and William Ball married in 1797. For such a common name, this is not an overwhelming amount of persons.

I don’t know if any of these Ball men listed in 1796 are related. I do know that each of these names–William and John and Samuel–appear in later generations of Balls. But they are common names. I don’t think the William is “my” William–this “gold and silversmith” William appears in lots of records before and after this 1796 entry and I’m fairly certain “my” William moves right after his 1797 marriage to New York City.

Another task for finding the “right” Green family is to locate a map from this time period for the area.

And another note of information here–in my earlier years of genealogical work, I’m pretty sure I would have recorded the 1796 Robert Green as a lawyer rather than a sawyer. Here’s the way the entry looks in the original:

During this period of typography, note that an uppercase “S” looks more like a lowercase “L” through our 21st century eyes. You can look at the lowercase “S”, in “Fell’s Point” for example, when it comes at the end of the word, and it looks like we expect an “s” to look. But when it is the first letter in “St.” the abbreviation for Street, it looks like a lower case “F” or “L.”

Too tedious a lesson? Maybe, but when I’m working during this time period, in an urban setting, knowing a person’s occupations is sometimes the way to distinguish one person from another when their names are the same. Good ol’ William Ball the Shipbuilder, for example. So knowing a lawyer from a sawyer becomes an important distinction.

Now, what’s the deal with listing the Widow Green only as a widow? No first name, no occupation, just a last name and an address. ack! I’ve seen widows listed as “wid of [husband's name]” which is way more useful, despite it making women extensions of their husbands. But this particular year she’s just listed as widow with only her address as the distinguishing characteristic.

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I found a marriage for an Ann Pamela Green to a William Ball, date 11 Feb 1797, in Baltimore, Maryland–in the First Methodist Episcopal Church.

I first found it at the LDS website. Then I found it listed at the USGenWeb site for Maryland–minus the name of the church.

Is this her, the right Ann Pamela? I tend to believe it is–the time is right–I have the date of the birth of their first child as 1800. Their daughter Ann Pamela Ball Pettibone Sweetser’s 1880 account of her family history states that her mother and father were from Maryland and Scotland. I have not put much stock in this information as those early histories are notoriously unreliable. But this is the same history that states that her mother died in Clark County Indiana, and as posted just previously, this has turned out to be the case, based on the death notice in the New York Spectator.

Another bit of info that supports this hypothesis is that Ann Pamela Green Ball’s second son was named William Green Ball. He is “my” line. So does this mean Ann Pamela’s father’s name was William? Or is the William after his father and the Green after his maternal grandfather? Or both?

Much more work to do. But it feels like, for the first time in many many years, that a little progress is being made on this line.

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I am thrilled!

I’ve done genealogy for almost 20 years now, and the big finds are few and far between these days. But one came this week.

One of the first families I got interested in was my Ball line. My maternal grandmother used to tell me the story of her grandmother whose father had been killed while the family traveling via wagon train to California. She would tell me that story as we were driving across the prairie in South Dakota and I had no problem imagining it. I’ve written about documenting that story and when I took that family back a couple more generations, there I was in New York City.

What do I know about researching in New York City? It’s been along hard trip for someone who has most of her ancestors coming through the south and being landowner farmers. This New York City bunch were shipbuilders.

Sure enough, I documented William the shipbuilder–there’s a story about his burials on my genealogy website www.allmyancestors.com and in this post.

I think I’ve documented that his father was John, and that he also had a brother named John. But what was his wife’s name? William and wife named their first son Jacob Weaver Ball, so I hypothesized that perhaps her maiden name was Weaver and maybe her husband’s shipbuilding partner Jacob Weaver was her brother or father. William died in 1818 and some of his survivors went west to Clark County, Indiana. His son William G. Ball married Elizabeth Charlton there in 1828 and he supposedly studied there to be a doctor. Later I found a short biography of William G’s sister Ann Pamela who married in Delaware County, Ohio in 1824. That bio said she and her mother were in Clark County and that her mother had died there.

In 2000, Hubbo and I took a trip to Clark County. It convinced me of the importance of rivers in this country since it was right on the Ohio River, right across from Louisville, Kentucky. I searched diligently for signs of this family having been in Clark County, but I found very few. Another daughter got married there in 1820, Adeline Ball to James Linton, and that marriage record is there, as is William G. and Elizabeth’s. But that’s about it. I’m now sure that their mother is buried there but there is no sign of a marker that I could find. (It would probably be more accurate to say that I haven’t found a published record of her marker–I want to go back now that I think I know where in the county they were living, not to mention knowing her name.)

This week I put in my credit card number and subscribed to the new GenealogyBank database. I’d had some good luck with some of the holdings in this database, searching the old fashioned way. But being able to search early New York City newspapers electronically was just too tempting.

So I started searching on all the Ball family member’s names. And there she was–

In the October 26, 1821 issue of the New York Spectator, there was a short obituary. With her name. And her date, place and cause of death. And “consort of the late Wm. Ball, Esq. deceased” confirms that her husband is dead and she is the surviving spouse. (I consulted the Encyclopedia of Genealogy just to be sure.)

Y’know, I teach classes in doing genealogical research, I work in a place where the majority of what I do is respond to genealogical research questions, and I even do some “professional” genealogical work for others. It is more than embarrassing to admit that I’ve searched for years for a newspaper from Clark County Indiana that might have an account of Mrs. Ball’s death. Never once did I think it would be in a New York City newspaper. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I didn’t think I’d ever find anything about her in a New York City newspaper. I let my unfamiliarity with doing urban research and a common name keep me from doing what I should have known to do. After all, I’d found other “grandmothers’” obituaries in newspapers, and newspapers of where they’d formerly lived. What can I say? I hope the lesson is learned, but mostly I’m just grateful to finally have her name.

Now, what is her maiden name?

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This is a letter written by my great-grandfather Charles Winfield Osborne, usually known as CW, to his wife Gertrude Mobley Osborne. I believe Charles was away from home, working and looking for a place to settle his young family. The year must have been 1877 because of the info in the last paragraph. Their 2 year old son Raphael had died 1 July 1877 and so the date that is cut off is assumed to be the same year.

There were 10 children in this family, and nearly all of them were born in different places–all in central Texas–but it makes me wonder about this man. What I’ve heard is that he was always looking for good land. He did eventually settle in Lubbock and then in Pampa. And he had enough money to provide well for his family based on what I’ve heard.

The child this letter refers to was named Raphael, and he is buried in the Fairview Cemetery in Pampa, as are his parents. Raphael obviously didn’t die in Pampa, so he was evidently moved fom Grimes or Hill County to Gray County. (Which gives me another piece of information to follow up on. When was he moved and who initiated this. Or, is there just a tombstone there to indicate his existence?)

My other question has to do with the language of this letter. I never thought of my Osborne line as particularly religious. My paternal grandfather, the author’s son, had no use for organized religion, according to what I was told. So does this letter reflect a style of language used in the day when speaking of deceased children or is it heartfelt and spontaneous? I suppose it could be both, but it does make me wonder.

I am grateful to have copies of these letters, supplied by a cousin. Despite growing up in the same community as my paternal grandparents, I wouldn’t say I know a great deal about this branch of my family as far as information beyond the lines on the pedigree chart.

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