Ball High School

George Ball arrived in Galveston during the cholera epidemic of 1839 and opened a dry goods store with his brother Albert. He became a director of the Commercial and Agricultural Bank, the first incorporated bank in Texas, in 1847, and started his own banking house, Ball, Hutchings and Company, in 1854. During the Civil War he moved to Houston and used his merchant's experience to get goods shipped through Mexico for the Confederate government. The Handbook of Texas says he gave to hospitals, asylums and schools but kept his charities concealed. He died in March 1884.

What the plaque says

Ball High School Following the creation of a public free school system in Galveston in 1881, philanthropist George Ball (1817-1884) made a proposal to the city for the construction of a high school. He offered either to donate funds for the building of a school or to have it built himself and then donate it to the city. The city leaders voted to have Ball build the school. A contract was signed with the George Locke and Co. Construction firm on January 15, 1884, and the cornerstone was laid one month later. The stone was inscribed "George Ball to the Children of Galveston." Ball died the following month, before the school was completed. The first graduation ceremony at the school took place on May 31, 1887. Members of the Ball family continued to support the school, and public donations helped rebuild the school following the 1900 storm. Ball High School opened at its present location in 1955. It was merged with Central High School in 1969. Many people prominent in Galveston history graduated from Ball High School, including Albert Lasker, John Sealy, and Marion Levy. The school continues its century-old tradition of educating Galveston's young people. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 1.1 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• Moody Mansion — 1.2 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 1.4 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.7 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• Thomas Henry Borden — 0.2 mi
• Michel B. Menard — 0.3 mi
• Louis Trezevant Wigfall — 0.4 mi
• Lent Munson Hitchcock — 0.4 mi