All My Ancestors

This is my 4th great-grandfather, William Green Ball.

Remember, he’s the one whose mother I finally found not too long ago. We’d always suspected his middle name came from his mother’s maiden name but didn’t know for sure. After all, he had brothers named Jacob Weaver Ball and James Robinson Ball, and those were perfectly good maiden names as well.

He died in Iowa in 1881, and I wish I knew more about when and where this photo was taken. I’ve never seen the original, but there seem to be some other family photos that were taken at the same time. On the 1880 census, he and Elizabeth, his wife, are living down in Benton County, Arkansas. He was born in New York City in 1808, went to Clark County, Indiana after the death of his father about 1818, and then on to Warren County, Iowa by 1848. I suspect he spent some time in Missouri before he went to Iowa but I haven’t dug that part out yet. I do have some indication that he was in Montgomery County, Kansas in between Iowa and Arkansas. He became a part of the community wherever he was, but he also didn’t seem hesitant to move on if he thought there were more opportunities elsewhere.

In Iowa he was a “country doctor,” but he was also one of the founding members of the agricultural society. On occasions he ran for a county office, and his home was sometimes the voting site for the precinct where he lived west of Indianola. His father had been a shipbuilder and both of his brothers remained in New York City. Two of his sons died “crossing the plains,” and he raised one of their daughters, Martha Jane, who was my grandmother’s grandmother. I feel fortunate to have a photo of him. It took me a long time to find it, and sure enough, it proved my theory that you have to track the daughters of the daughters of the daughters–she’s the one who had them. Thanks so much, Kel.

And here’s Grandmother Elizabeth Charlton Ball.

She was born in Tennessee, married in Indiana, and died in Iowa in October, just weeks after her husband. In fact, his obituary of September, 1881, says “he returned to Warren County about 4 weeks ago, with his aged wife, who it is expected will soon follow him to the long sleep.” Sure enough, they both “sleep” in Linn Grove Cemetery in Warren County, Iowa.

That tall marker just to the right of the flag pole is theirs. Her name is on one side and his is on the other.

Through interlibrary loan, I ordered a roll of microfilm from Clark County, Indiana, hoping to find a “local” record of Anne Pamela Green Ball’s death that I’d found in the New York City newspaper.

I haven’t found one yet, but I did find some other information on the family I’ll post in another entry.

Much of the business of the day was printed in those early newspapers. I found lots of advertisements for merchants, minutes of the local medical society, ads for sheriff’s sales for back taxes, a few notices of runaway slaves, and then notices of spousal abandonment– usually the husband writing about the wife. As a child in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I remember seeing notices like “I will be responsible for no debts other than my own” in our small town local newspaper and asking my mom what they were for. She told me it usually meant the people were getting a divorce and this was part of the process.

The earlier matrimonial-distress notices I saw in the Indiana Intelligencer and Farmer’s Friend were much more descriptive. Here’s on from William W. Love, posted 1 January 1822.

Doesn’t he sound pained? I thought this was was a little more dramatic than the others I’d read, but what made it really different was what immediately followed:

I looked up “Replication” at Online Etymology Dictionary, and sure enough, it’s meaning has changed from how we use it most often today. It was formerly a legal term for a reply, “to answer to a legal charge.”

Mary is the only wife I’ve found who published a response. And she’s obviously not shy about answering each of William’s points. Now I’m curious about Mary. As far as I know, she wasn’t one of my relatives, but I’d be proud to be her descendant.

There is, by the way, in the paper about a month later, a statement that Mary has filed for divorce from William. Looks like Mary was indeed free to express her own opinion, despite William’s notice to the contrary.

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.