Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  THE BALL FAMILY OF VIRGINIA CAN BE TRACED MORE CONCRETELY AND with much less guesswork to the sixteenth century, with William Ball, the great-grandfather of George Washington and Mary Ball’s grandfather. This William emigrated from England to the colonies, and, depending who is asked, was the son of two fathers. Some say his father was the Reverend Richard Ball of Northamptonshire, England, vicar of Saint Helen’s in Bishopsgate, London,13 while others, including Mount Vernon’s official website,14 believe it was William Ball of Lincoln’s Inn, London.15

  WHETHER THE NEWLY ARRIVED VIRGINIAN WAS WILLIAM SON OF RICHARD or William son of William, the great-grandfather of George Washington was a man worthy of his descendants. He was born around 1615, and “practically nothing is known of his early life, and we can only infer that he was educated in or about London,” said Heck.16 London was the cultural center of England, and either Reverend Richard or William Ball would have educated his son in the vicinity.

  On July 2, 1638, at around twenty-five years of age, William married Hannah Atherall, who came from a London family and whose father was a “barrister-at-law,” a lawyer who specialized in English common law.17

  THE MARRIED COUPLE WILLIAM AND HANNAH BALL HAD FOUR CHILDREN—three sons, one daughter—in England: the eldest, Richard; William, born in 1641, and often distinguished by his father as William Jr. or “Captain William”; Joseph, born 1649, the father of Mary and grandfather of George Washington; and Hannah, born 1650.18

  William Ball, about forty years of age, emigrated to Virginia around 1657, fleeing England during the English Civil War. The conflict was principally fought between those who supported more power to Parliament (dubbed the Roundheads), and those who believed in the royal prerogative (the Cavaliers), in support of the king, then Charles I. The Roundheads were mostly Puritans from southern and eastern England, made up mostly of gentry and merchant classes; whereas the royalists and Cavaliers were nobles and Anglicans and Catholics from north and western England.

  A turning point in the war was the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, where William Ball participated as a staunch royalist and served “faithfully under the banners of the ill-fated Charles.” Heck continued on the topic of Marston Moor: “By the defeat of the Royal Army, Colonel Ball lost the greater part of his estates, which were by no means inconsiderable.”19 The battle resulted in a major defeat for the royalists at the hands of Oliver Cromwell, and through a series of captures, defeats, and recaptures, Charles I was convicted and beheaded for high treason in 1649.

  A royalist like Ball had to go, lest he meet the same fate, so he went to the Colony of Virginia, “the most loyal of the king’s possessions,” setting foot in the New World around 1650.20 A comprehensive list of early Virginian immigrants compiled by George Greer, a clerk at the Virginia State Land Office, at the turn of the twentieth century, noted that there were at least twelve other Balls that came to Virginia between 1623 and 1666, with a “Ball, Wm” arriving in 1653.21

  If relations to Preacher John Ball encouraged George Washington in his desire to break away from authority, a later descendent, George Washington Ball, took a much more pessimistic view: “Poor ‘Bals’! Rebellion seems to have run in their blood, and their ill-luck to have led them generally on the losing side.”22

  WILLIAM BALL’S REASONS TO FLEE WERE NOT UNIQUE TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. Of the many incentives that immigrants to the New World had to flee the Mother Country, the desire for freedom was one of the more passionate. Quakers like George Fox arrived from England to get away from institutional persecution. Puritans came to New England, Catholics to Maryland—all of different faiths in many different ways, running west to their own freedom.

  Political persecution, of course, was a fear both large and small. Sir William Berkeley, to be royal governor of Virginia, encouraged royalists to go to Virginia in hopes of keeping a royal colony. However, it was overestimated: “Cavalier immigration to Virginia during the 1640s and 1650s was not large; no more than a couple of hundred arrived in this period. The great majority remained in England either in retirement or fomenting plots against Parliament and the republic. Others fled to the Continent.”23

  WILLIAM BALL LEFT HIS NATIVE LONDON AT A TIME OF UPHEAVAL, NOT just politically but environmentally. London was a plague-filled city of smog, filth, and pollution. Among those blamed for the air quality were “Brewers, Diers, Sope and Salt-boylers, Lime-burners, and the like,” according to John Evelyn, a member of the newly founded Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Therefore, he proposed to move all of these industries from the city, approximately six miles away. Additionally, planting flowers and other greenery, like lime trees, yellow or white jessamine, or lavender throughout the city would help dissipate some of this “smoak,” and from there London could be seen restored. “Men would even be found,” he said, “to breath[e] a new life as it were, as well as London appear a new city, delivered from that . . . so infamous an aer.”24

  The New World’s rural and open land, away from the pollution of Europe, would offer a clean breath of fresh air for all immigrants, especially William Ball, who needed a fresh start desperately.

  IT WAS ONLY THREE GENERATIONS FROM WILLIAM TO GEORGE, AND A LITTLE more than a century from native Englishmen loyal to the Crown to Americans fighting against it. It is with a bit of irony, then, that genealogist Earl Heck believed “he and his family lived with relatives waiting for the Stuarts to be restored to power in England.”25

  When the English Crown was restored and the republican cause squashed in England in 1660, William, the royalist, did not return. He had become fully Virginian. “He soon decided to cast his lot with the fortunes of the New World. After 1660, he was a member of a court to make a treaty with the Indians and to establish a boundary for the occupation of land by the white man.”26

  His first occupation, according to Northumberland County records, was “Merchant,” which suggested that he did not have a plantation or land of his own. It wasn’t until 1663 that he became a “planter” by occupation, after he had a grant of land issued on January 18, 1663, on Narrow Neck Creek in Lancaster County. It was three hundred acres of land, and previously belonged to neighbor David Fox for ten years.27 This would later be called Millenbeck, fifty acres of which, within several dozen years, was bought by the County of Lancaster to create the short-lived but nevertheless thriving county seat of Queenstown.

  Within a decade, William’s children, wife, servants, and slaves also emigrated to the Colony of Virginia. He brought his son Richard on May 27, 1657, and his son Joseph in early January of 1660. On March 4, 1665, his wife; his son William; his daughter, Hannah; and others arrived.28

  Within a decade, the Ball family’s move to the New World was complete.

  LANCASTER COUNTY, VIRGINIA, WAS FRONTIER LAND. MANY PEOPLE wanted to lay claim to the rich, fertile region, the hostile Native Americans notwithstanding. The Virginia Assembly attempted but failed to legislate who could travel into the area, and soon many took up acreage. In 1643, Captain Samuel Matthews acquired four thousand acres of land north of the Rappahannock River. Sometimes this acreage was taken by diplomatic trade and purchase from the Native Americans, such as in the late 1650s, when Colonel Moore Fauntleroy bought land from the Rappahannocks. Again, legislation was passed to curb and protect the ever-fickle relationship between colonizers and natives. “Even so,” wrote historian James Horn, “English settlers appear to have taken the view that, once they moved into an area, resident Indians would soon move out.” This proved true for many tribes.29 By 1653, ninety-one families had settled along forty-five miles of the river. Through the years and decades following, the vast majority of those settling in Lancaster were immigrants from England, from all backgrounds. There were some Scottish, Welsh, and Irish immigrants, but those were few and far between. Of course, indentured servants also provided a major population boost. By 1656, they accounted for almost half the population of Lancaster County.30

  HISTORIANS, IN ORDER TO DISTINGUIS
H BETWEEN WILLIAM BALL THE IMMIGRANT and his son William (not to mention this second William’s descendants named William), use the moniker “Colonel William Ball” for the former. He received that rank in or around 1672, and Horace Hayden believes it was as he was appointed county lieutenant of Lancaster. “Military titles were never assumed in those days,” he wrote. “They were conferred by the authority of the Governor, who, under the Royal Charter, was Commander-in-Chief of the Colony. . . . Such was the danger to the colonists from the incursions of the neighboring Indians that some show of military organization was necessary for defense.” To wit, Colonel Ball’s son William was also named captain, according to transactional records.31 He mobilized militia and men, led under Nathaniel Bacon, for Lancaster County against Native Americans, and he was to “make choise of the men and horse before lymitted in their countyes to be raised for their respective fforts.”32 His responsibilities in Virginia more than likely made him come in contact with the Washington family as well.

  Nevertheless, this Colonel William Ball gained the trust of the New World settlers, witnessing deeds almost immediately, before his children or wife arrived. He was clearly an active member of the community. By 1653, he witnessed the patent given from Henry Fleet to John Sharpe, two hundred acres of land in “Fleet’s Bay,” Lancaster County.33 He was granted passage at least four times in intervening years to England. By 1659, he was appointed Commissioner of Lancaster County, witnessed more wills, and inventoried and appraised several estates as necessary.34 He even handled settlers’ legal disputes, suggesting that he was a practitioner of law.35 He would continue handling such disputes throughout his life. By 1670, he became Chief Magistrate of Lancaster, a high position worthy of the Ball name, working under the Virginia legislature based in Jamestown.36

  In 1667, the Colonel became Major William Ball, and on September 30 of that same year, he received “240 [acres] of land on the N. side Rapp’k adjoining the land of David Fox.”37 The land of Major Ball started to pile up, and by the time of his death in late 1680 he had accumulated “nearly two thousand acres of land in Lancaster and Rappahannock Counties,” as counted by Heck.38

  THE PLANTATION HOME WILLIAM OWNED IS LONG LOST AND GONE, MAKING it difficult to say where exactly this family lived. Wherever it was, it was built by carpenter and wheelwright Edward Floyd, a specialist in the trade in Lancaster. He was described as building “the great home” of William Ball, and he later repaired and did extensive work on the windows, chimneys, and rooms of William’s son’s “great dwelling house.”39

  WILLIAM BALL THE IMMIGRANT DIED IN LATE 1680, AROUND THE AGE OF sixty-five, survived by his wife, Hannah, and three of his four children. His will, dated in October of that year and sealed by Thomas Everest and John Mottby in November, reads as a man who came from simple and humble origins, relatively, amassing quite a hoard of wealth within thirty years from emigration to the time of his own death.40

  Of particular note in the will was the very little that he gave his daughter, Hannah: “Only five shillings.” All his other possessions, including land, cattle, and slaves, went to his wife or his other children. Hannah Ball got married; as Hannah Ball Fox, she had her own life and was no longer part of the Ball family.

  William’s wife, Hannah, made out her will in late 1694, almost fifteen years after her husband’s death; however, her son William, their oldest surviving child (Richard had died sometime earlier), died in November of that year, making much of the will irrelevant. On June 25, 1695, Hannah wrote her second will—just in time, too, as she died shortly after. She had not remarried, a custom unusual for the time, instead continuing her late husband’s work in quiet solitude.41

  Both William and Hannah, the grandparents of Mary and great-grandparents of George Washington, were buried in unmarked graves—or, at least, by the time of Joseph II’s interest in his family’s whereabouts a century later, they were unmarked. In several letters to cousin Joseph Chinn between 1754 and 1755, he requested, “I would have you out of hand take a good hand or two with you, and go down to the Plantation where my Grandfather and mother lived and are buryed; and get the assistance of Hannah Dennis to shew you as nigh as she can the spot where they are buryed; and let the hands skim the ground over about four or five inches deep; and if you come over the graves you will find the ground of a different Colour. If you can find that, then stake it out at the four Corners with sound Locust or Cedar stakes, that you may be sure to find it again; for I think to send a stone to put over them. Pray take diligent Care of this affair, and you will oblige.”42 After one final request to “dig a little deeper” in late 1756, the matter was dropped and the graves forgotten.43

  COLONEL WILLIAM BALL’S YOUNGEST SON WAS JOSEPH, BORN ON MAY 25, 1649, in England, who would later become Mary’s father. The other branches of the Ball family continued in Millenbeck, Virginia, and all around the Colony of Virginia for the next three centuries.

  There was a catch, however: “Of [Joseph] very little is known,” wrote genealogist Horace Hayden.44 He married twice, first around 1675 to Elizabeth Romney (or Elizabeth Rogers).45 Like his father, he was prominent in the Lancaster community. Joseph became a vestryman and worked closely with the local Anglican church, Saint Mary’s Whitechapel in Lancaster, built several years earlier in the late 1660s. The Balls were closely knit to this church, placed squarely on the main county road, with relatives both distant and close having worshiped in this denomination for centuries. To this day the cemetery holds the remains of many of the Virginia Balls, known and unknown, famous and not, unsung heroes of this family. In the 1740s, when the church was expanded and rebuilt, two Ball relatives were tasked with and financed a south gallery in the church, which is noted prominently on Whitechapel’s website and in many publications as a source of pride of its rich history.46

  Around 1700, Elizabeth died, and Joseph remarried a woman of unknown background named Mary Johnson around 1707. This Mary was soon after to give birth to their only child, a daughter named Mary, who became the mother of George Washington.47

  WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE BALL FAMILY?

  Much like the rest of the early Balls, and of Mary the mother of Washington herself, the truth is a mixture of legends and facts and records and oral traditions. “History is silent” about George’s maternal grandmother.48

  “The maiden name of Mary Johnson is unknown. Some researchers believe it was a Montague, because her grandson, George Washington, used a flying griffin similar to the one on the Montague crest as his personal seal. Others think she was a Bennett.”49 Hayden did give credence to the idea of a Montague lineage, making George related to Drogo, who nearly seven centuries earlier invaded England with William the Conqueror.50

  The Montague connection was shrugged off by some biographers, most notably Sara Pryor (who had a penchant for placing emphasis on the romantic rather than the factual side of history), as nothing more than a historical anecdote worthy of a mention. “It matters little whether or [not] the mother of Washington came of noble English blood,” she wrote. “For while an honorable ancestry is a gift of the gods, and should be regarded as such by those who possess it, an honorable ancestry is not merely a titled ancestry. Descent from nobles may be interesting, but it can only be honorable when the strawberry leaves have crowned a wise head and an ermine warmed a true heart.”51

  The other side of the spectrum as to who Mary Johnson was is quite anticlimactic. The mother of Mary Ball Washington, some report and have concluded, was simply and boringly Joseph’s housekeeper during his first marriage, based only on her witnessing a deed some years earlier. Other genealogists and those interested in Ball history have balked at the idea; Hayden, for instance, immediately scolded those who debased Mary Johnson as nothing more than “plebeian,”52 a rumor made more egregious from the supposed gentry origin of the family. Yet the rumor continued on; James Flexner in his multivolume biography of George Washington perpetuated this legend, calling Mary “an illiterate widow.”53 And from there the appellati
on stuck.

  This controversy serves to illustrate an important point. Despite Americans’ new democratic ideals, they still found a need to seek a mythological origin story for this country of shoemakers and silversmiths. The allure of the divine right of kings lingered in the air.

  FROM AROUND THE TIME OF HIS MARRIAGE TO ELIZABETH IN 1675 TO HER death a quarter century later, Joseph and his family returned to England, and it was there that “his children by his first marriage were born.”54 Yet his return to Virginia and building of an estate at “Epping Forest” allowed his second wife, Mary, and Virginian-born daughter, Mary, to enjoy a purely American lifestyle.

  The location of their estate on the 720-acre land near the Rappahannock was originally called “The Forest Plantation” or “The Forest Quarter” or simply “The Forest,” only being called “Epping Forest” in the nineteenth century by a Ball descendant. It was situated in the upper part of the county. Near Epping Forest in Virginia was Bewdley, the plantation home of James Ball, third son of Captain William Ball, son of William, built about 1700. Before it burned down in a fire in 1917, the home housed several generations of this Ball branch. Rumor had it that the house, which overlooked the Rappahannock, provided well-needed signal lanterns at night, through its many windows, for passing Continental and American ships during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.55

  The name Epping Forest was most likely a reference to their ancestral lands. In England, stretching for eighteen miles and containing nearly six thousand acres from northern London into Essex, there still stands an ancient forest, once owned by royalty, scattered with manor houses dating from the medieval period. Legend has it that Boudica, the famed female warrior, made her last stand there two millennia ago. This was the old and wondrous Epping Forest. The forest’s possession stretches back to the Iron Age, occupied by the Romans, by commoners, by royals and nobles and abbeys. (It is currently owned and managed by the City of London.) In Edward North Buxton’s guide to Epping Forest in 1905, he summarized, “From pre-Norman times until the eighteenth century, the maintenance of the sporting rights of the sovereign was paramount, and to this every other interest was subordinate.” Only the king could hunt there, while commoners were permitted only to graze or raise animals and gather wood.56