William Ball (1615-1680) Lancaster County, VA

Lancaster Couty

​Thirty-first in a series of biographical sketches of qualifying ancestors of the Jamestowne Society whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company
​

---

William Ball was born in 1615, studied law in London and served in the Royal Army in the Civil Wars under Charles I.  With the regicide in 1650, he lost the greater part of his English estates and fled to Virginia. 

He had married Hannah Atherall (Atherold) 2 July 1638 in London and immigrated to Virginia with his wife and three children--Hannah, Joseph, and William. He did not apply for a land grant in Virginia for eight years, waiting for the restoration of the 1660 Stuart kings. He settled in Narrow Neck (now Ball Point) on the west side of the Corrotoman River in 1663.  Ball operated the vessel Merchant between England and Virginia as a tobacco merchant. 

He acquired 2000 acres in Virginia, served on an Indian peace-treaty council, and administered Lancaster County affairs as a Colonel.  He built a Georgian mansion, Millenbeck, and led the defense of the county to help quell Bacon’s Rebellion.  One of his land grants for 300 acres adjoined the land of Daniel Fox, who married his daughter Hannah. He was a Warden of Christ Church in Lancaster and also owned land in Rappahannock County. 

He served as a Burgess from 1699-1173 and was George Washington’s great grandfather.
​ 
He died at Millenbeck in 1680 and left his estate to his wife and two sons. 
 
FMC Descendants of William Ball: Jane Tatum, Fredrick William Lewis III, and Fredrick William Lewis IV.