Ball, Charles
Birth
Death
First Name
Last Name
Name in Index
Person Biography
Charles Burgess Ball was born 14 December 1793 to Colonel Burgess Ball and Frances Thornton Washington Peyton Ball in Leesburg, Virginia. Charles Ball married Lucy Throckmorton Potter on 14 January 1814; they had five children.
While little information about Charles B. Ball seems to have survived, he was a member of the prominent Ball family, which included Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother. Charles’s father, Burgess, was an influential figure during the Revolutionary War, whose relationship with George Washington was close enough that Burgess informed Washington of the death of Mary Ball Washington in 1789. The Ball family lived in Fredericksburg before Burgess moved his family to Leesburg.
Charles B. Ball served in the 57th Regiment of the Virginia militia during the War of 1812. After the war, he became a practicing physician in Loudoun County. Nineteenth-century historian L. B. Anderson noted that early American physicians faced many challenges. Country physicians like Ball were only consulted when patients were extremely ill and could not stand their pains anymore. The work of these humble professionals, as Anderson wrote, was recognized not in great histories or medical books, but in the hearts of their patients.
Charles B. Ball died in 1823 at the age of 29. He is buried in the Leesburg Presbyterian Church Cemetery.
By Nathan Whitley
