Ball, The Rev. Thomas H.

The school Ball joined in 1855 was modeled on Austin College, the men's school that had admitted its first class in Huntsville in 1850. That same year a larger two-story building was finished with local money, and by 1856 and 1857 about eighty students were enrolled, mostly from Walker County and nearby. The Handbook of Texas describes a classical course with music, art and embroidery. The trustees kept the college running through the Civil War, and in 1867 yellow fever killed its president, several teachers and some students.

What the plaque says

Ball, The Rev. Thomas H. 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. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 31 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• Pleasant Williams Kittrell — steps away
• Besser, General John Slater — steps away
• The Huntsville Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867 — steps away
• Joshua Houston — steps away