BFHA-RC-000038
Research record and source registry for Mary Ball. This archive entry preserves the corresponding publication section for website research review.
Publication excerpt:
MARY BALL: Bartholomew, William, Sr. Mary Ball, daughter of Bartholomew Ball and wife Elizabeth Henlen; date and place of birth, marriage and death unknown; grew up in the Prince Frederick Winyaw Parish-Queensborough Township area 1. The only known record on her is the Guardianship document 2 of 1755, when Bartholomew Ball listed his minor children and Mary’s name was illegible on the document, but does show up on the cover page or index to the Guardianship Document. It is family tradition3 that Mary married Jared Nelson of Craven County, South Carolina, who operated a ferryboat on the Santee River between Craven County and Berkeley County, and after the death of Jared Nelson, Mary Ball Nelson married General William Henderson of St. Matthews Parish, Craven County. If Jared Nelson married Mary Ball, it was prior to his marriage to Leticia Davis 4, and Mary died without issue5, because neither she nor her children are mentioned in the will of her brother, Edward Ball, which was made and signed on that date 6. Leticia Davis was the widow of Jared Nelson, who married General William Henderson 4 December 1782, as shown by a marriage settlement executed between William Ransom Davis, brother of Leticia Davis Nelson, and General William Henderson; and is on file in the office of the Historical Commission of South Carolina, in Columbia7. There is one remote possibility that Mary Ball may have been a wife of Jared Nelson prior to his marriage to Leticia Davis: Thomas Pickney, soldier, diplomat and governor of South Carolina, was on a recruiting mission for soldiers for the Revolutionary War effort through St. Johns Parish, Berkeley County, South Carolina, and across the Santee River into Craven County during the time of 1775-1780. When he came to the Santee River where Nelson’s Ferry was, he and his party had to spend the night on the cold hard ground without supper and breakfast the next morning, because the ferry was tied up on the opposite bank of the river, and Jared Nelson was laid up with a broken shoulder and could not operate the ferry, and his wife (whoever she was at this time) was sick in bed with “the fever8.” “The fever,” as the swamp fever was commonly called in those days, had an extremely high mortality rate because the people did not have a cure for it, nor did they know how to treat it. Quinine was barely known and very scarce, especially in the backwoods and lonely countryside. REFERENCES 1. South Carolina Department of Archives And History, Alphabetical Index Of Land Records, Roll 1, page 1021. 2. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Probate Records, Vol 83-A, page 313. 3. Family Tradition Story not proven with documentation. 4. South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 27, pages 212-214. 5. South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 28, pages 108-111. 6. Georgia State Archives, Old Court, Liberty County Will Book A, dated 1791-1822, pages 38 and 39 – Will of Edward Ball. 7. Marriage Settlements, Book #1, page 113. South Carolina State Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina.129 8. Letters of Thomas Pickney, 1775-1780, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine A/C 11:247:21. Pages 24-27.130