BALLARD FAMILY
John Ballard was born in 1760. The place of his birth and his parents names are unknown to me at the present time. On August 27, 1784 he married Sarah, daughter of Zebulon Heston and Sarah Burgess of Bucks Co., PA. The Hestons were Quakers, but John was not. He and Sarah were married by John Chapman, a Justice of the Peace in Bucks Co., PA.
Begining about 1797 several members of the Heston family began moving west to Washington County, PA. Sarah and John Ballard also moved west, first to the area of Washington and Fayette Counties, PA where some of their children married and settled. John, Sarah and others of their children continued on to Trumbull County, OH. Their daughter, Mary married Robert Kyle on 20 April 1808 and their son, Zebulon III married Elizabeth Wilson on December 11, 1823, both marriages taking place in Youngstown, Trumbull, OH.
Zebulon Ballard and his wife Elizabeth Wilson lived in Austintown, Trumbull Co. Ohio. According to family tradition, Zebulon was a champion wrestler. One cold winter night in 1840 on his way home from a wrestling match in Youngstown, he fell through the ice on the Mahoning River. Although he didn't drown, he did contract pneumonia which took his life. He left his wife with six children to raise. Their names were Sarah Jane, Samuel, John, Hannah, Caroline and Elihu and they ranged in age from 14 to 4. Elizabeth remained a widow for about five years and then married Ebenezer Bowen of Trumbull County on January 16, 1845.
Zebulon and Elizabeth's daughter, Caroline Ballard, born in 1836 was four years old when her father died. She is my great-great-grandmother. She married Riley Carter on June 30, 1857 and they lived in a log cabin in Weathersfield Township where they raised a family of eleven children. Riley served in the Civil War while Caroline kept the family together and nursed Riley when he was sent home to recover from wounds received at Kennesaw Mountain. You can read about Riley's family on my Carter Family page.
What I know of Caroline has been gleaned from family stories passed down mainly by my grandfather, William Carter. Caroline was called "Cal". Her children addressed her as "Ma'am". I know that she enjoyed sitting on her front porch in a rocking chair and that she smoked a clay pipe. She baked bread in a stone oven out in her yard. Her house was a log cabin and as such was not taxable as real property until years later when the logs were covered with siding in an effort to update the property. I can imagine her taking care of her son, Charlie, in the upstairs bedroom when he was critically ill with typhoid at the age of 21; and then burying him when there was no more to be done. When my grandfather was nine years old, he was very ill with what was then called the "black measles". They took him to Grandma "Cal" and she kept him and nursed him for nine months and then taught him to walk again.
Caroline Ballard Carter lived through three wars and three economic depressions. She buried her husband and three of her adult children within a three year period between 1889 and 1901 and buried a fourth and then a fifth just four years before she passed on. Through all the hardship she made sure her children were clothed, fed and sheltered. She taught them by example to share what they had. Members of her extended family depended on her to give them a home when they were homeless and to nurse them when they were sick, and she did.
Grandma "Cal" died on October 30, 1920 at the age of 84 in the same house in Weathersfield Township where she spent almost all of her adult life. She is buried at Kerr Cemetery in Weathersfield.
