Hannah Burdine Ball

"Joseph T. Ball had four sisters, three of whom were schoolteachers and all remained unmarried: Mary Montgomery Ball (1800-1829); Lucy Montgomery Ball (1807- 1891); Martha Violet Ball (1811-1894); and Hannah Burdine Ball (1813-1888?). Lucy and Martha became deeply involved in the abolitionist movement and initially were officers in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) in the 1830s. In 1838, Martha V. Ball was described by a fellow abolitionist as being 'slightly colored' and sometimes the sisters appear as 'black delegates' at various conferences. In 1839, in protest against the Weston sisters’ denouncing the Christian clergy, the Ball sisters split from the BFASS and formed the Boston Ladies’ Abolitionist Society. The two sisters were also friends of and correspondents with Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, the Grimké sisters, and many other famous abolitionists. (The Boston Public Library has several dozen pieces of their holographic correspondence in the Rare Books collection; they are also microfilmed as part of the Maria Weston Chapman archives.) After about 1840 (and the death of their Jamaican father) the sisters began to identify only as 'white'."

Sources

• Connell O'Donovan, Early Boston Mormons and Missionaries, A to C 1831-1860 (September 2014 Version), accessed May 13, 2015.