Valentine Ball (b. 1705-1710) was born in Middlesex County, Virginia and married Susanna Lewis. Susanna was from an old Virginia family which had emigrated from Wales. Valentine and Susanna were the parents of ten children. One of their sons was John Ball (1745-1817) who married Elizabeth Hansbrough in 1776. They were the parents of seven children whose descendants live in Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and other parts of the United States.
Fifteen years after its hardcover debut, the FSG Classics reissue of the celebrated work of narrative nonfiction that won the National Book Award and changed the American conversation about race, with a new preface by the author The Ball family hails from South Carolina—Charleston and thereabouts. Their plantations were among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the South. Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his family's slaves. Part historical narrative, part oral history, part personal story of investigation and catharsis, Slaves in the Family is, in the words of Pat Conroy, "a work of breathtaking generosity and courage, a magnificent study of the complexity and strangeness and beauty of the word ‘family.'"
A Smithsonian Best History Book of 2019 In this enthralling history of the debutante ritual, Kristen Richardson sheds new light on contemporary ideas about women and marriage. Kristen Richardson, from a family of debutantes, chose not to debut. But as her curiosity drove her to research this enduring custom, she learned that it, and debutantes, are not as simple as they seem. The story begins in England six hundred years ago when wealthy fathers needed an efficient way to find appropriate husbands for their daughters. Elizabeth I’s exclusive presentations at her court expanded into London’s full season of dances, dinners, and courting, extending eventually to the many corners of the British empire and beyond. Richardson traces the social seasons of young women on both sides of the Atlantic, from Georgian England to colonial Philadelphia, from the Antebellum South and Wharton’s New York back to England, where debutante daughters of Gilded Age millionaires sought to marry British aristocrats. She delves into Jazz Age debuts, carnival balls in the American South, and the reimagined ritual of elite African American communities, which offers both social polish and academic scholarships. The Season shares the captivating stories of these young women, often through their words from diaries, letters, and interviews that Richardson conducted at contemporary balls. The debutantes give voice to an array of complex feelings about being put on display, about the young men they meet, and about what their future in society or as wives might be. While exploring why the debutante tradition persists—and why it has spread to Russia, China, and other nations—Richardson has uncovered its extensive cultural influence on the lives of daughters in Britain and the US and how they have come to marry.
Much has been written about the "southern lady," that pervasive and enduring icon of antebellum regional identity. But how did the lady get on her pedestal--and were the lives of white southern women always so different from those of their northern contemporaries? In her ambitious new book, Cynthia A. Kierner charts the evolution of the lives of white southern women through the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican eras. Using the lady on her pedestal as the end--rather than the beginning--of her story, she shows how gentility, republican political ideals, and evangelical religion successively altered southern gender ideals and thereby forced women to reshape their public roles. Kierner concludes that southern women continually renegotiated their access to the public sphere--and that even the emergence of the frail and submissive lady as icon did not obliterate women's public role.Kierner draws on a strong overall command of early American and women's history and adds to it research in letters, diaries, newspapers, secular and religious periodicals, travelers' accounts, etiquette manuals, and cookery books. Focusing on the issues of work, education, and access to the public sphere, she explores the evolution of southern gender ideals in an important transitional era. Specifically, she asks what kinds of changes occurred in women's relation to the public sphere from 1700 to 1835. In answering this major question, she makes important links and comparisons, across both time and region, and creates a chronology of social and intellectual change that addresses many key questions in the history of women, the South, and early America.
In a society where predators are always the ones doing the celebrating, Jennifer Fliss's debut collection of short stories, THE PREDATORY ANIMAL BALL, crashes the party. These stories are about the people left in the predators' wake, and the large and small ways in which their grief and fear manifest. Predators appear in the places we least expect it, and this collection turns the previously accepted hierarchies upside down in a series of flash fiction that are often absurd, but always cutting.
A Certain Ms. Ball is a historical romance adventure for all those eggheads, children, and grownups who want to know how high-tech and the space age were started, who the nerds really were who advanced the arts and the sciences we take for granted today. The interfaces for DVDs, the Internet, lasers, and fiber optics to collect light from a laser source and focus it to a point for readout or for coupling to another fiber optic for communications are tiny glass spheres, some as small as 1/100 of an inch in diameter. Our two-millimeter heroine, Crystal, is born in A.D. 523 on the Arabian shore during a lightning storm. A shepherd boy finds her and keeps her until he dies as sultan. Shahrazad is his destiny, but he will have to wait. Crystal has many adventures with well-known historical figures. Our hero is reborn in 1636 and starts his search for Crystal, from her legend. As Captain Nemo he finds Crystal and his destiny. Their son remains to seek his destiny.
Bonita's become a pariah in South Carolina and leaves for greener pastures in Tennessee. Once again she becomes embroiled in scandal amidst delightful dialogue, gossip, parties, teas, luncheons, stately mansions, designer clothing and exquisite jewelry. Interspersed with delicious Southern recipes for comfort foods, get ready for another frolic through Dixieland with all of its mores, nuances, dialogue, colloquialisms, gentility, sex, and occasional depravity.
