DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Thomas Henry Ball came into this world in 1819, over in Northumberland County, Virginia — son of The Rev. David Thomas and Hannah Henry Gaskins Ball.
Now, when your father is a Methodist minister, sometimes the calling doesn't fall far from the pulpit, and sure enough, Thomas Henry Ball followed those footsteps straight into the ministry. He took his first congregation over in Prince Georges County, Maryland, and while he was servin' that church, he married Susan Rebecca Perrie. Life was movin' along.
Four children came into the world. And then, in 1853, shortly after the birth of that fourth child, Susan Rebecca was gone. That kind of loss has a weight to it that doesn't lift easy.
But the story doesn't stop there — it rarely does. In 1854, a relative by marriage, Dr. A.
W. Rawlings, came to Ball with an offer. Rawlings sat on the Board of Directors of Andrew Female College up in Huntsville, Texas, and he saw something in this grieving minister that the college needed.
Ball accepted. In 1855, he packed up his mother and his children and moved to Texas. Andrew Female College had been established in Huntsville in 1852 by the Methodist Church, and Ball stepped into a dual role there — professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and the Natural Sciences, and president of the college.
That's a considerable load to carry, but he carried it. Then in 1857, Rev. Ball married again — Mariah Obedience Spivey Cleveland, who was herself a teacher at the very same college.
Two educators under one roof, both devoted to that institution. The marker calls Ball one of the state's early Christian educators, and by any measure, that's earned. He served Andrew Female College as professor and president right up until the end.
And the end came hard and fast — 1858, typhoid fever. He'd been in Texas barely three years, shaped something that mattered, and then he was gone. Some lives burn bright and brief, and Thomas Henry Ball's was one of them.
What the marker says
Thomas Henry Ball was born in Northumberland County, Virginia, in 1819, the son of The Rev. David Thomas and Hannah Henry (Gaskins) Ball. Following in his father's footsteps, Ball became a Methodist minister. While serving his first congregation in Prince Georges County, Maryland, he married Susan Rebecca Perrie. She died in 1853, shortly after the birth of their fourth child. In 1854, Dr. A. W. Rawlings, a relative by marriage and a member of the Board of Directors of Huntsville's Andrew Female College, offered Ball a place on the school's faculty. He accepted and moved to Texas in 1855 with his mother and his children. He served as a professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and the Natural Sciences and as president of the college, which had been established in Huntsville in 1852 by the Methodist Church. In 1857, Rev. Ball married Mariah Obedience Spivey Cleveland, who also was a teacher at the college. One of the state's early Christian educators, Ball served Andrew Female College in the dual position of professor and president until he died in 1858 from typhoid fever.