Thomas H. Ball, Jr.

Ball first entered state politics in 1887 as an advocate of a prohibition amendment to the Texas constitution. In 1911 he chaired the Prohibition Statewide Executive Committee, and in 1914 a pre-primary convention made him the dry standard-bearer under the slogan "Play Ball." Both wets and drys expected him to win the governor's race. James Edward Ferguson, a newcomer, campaigned on farm tenant reform instead, and late endorsements of Ball by Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan backfired when Ferguson told national politicians to stay out of Texas affairs. Ferguson won in July.

What the plaque says

Thomas H. Ball, Jr. Son of the Rev. and Mrs. Thomas H. Ball, was born in Huntsville, Texas, on January 14, 1859. He graduated from Austin College in Huntsville in 1877. He married Minnie F. Thomason in 1882, and they became the parents of four children. Ball studied law in a Huntsville law office and in 1887, one year prior to his admittance to the Texas Bar, he was elected mayor of Huntsville. He served three terms. In 1896 Ball was elected to the U. S. Congress. During his four congressional terms he played a key role in gaining Federal authorization and funding for the building of the Houston Ship Channel. He returned to Houston in 1903 as the law partner of Frank Andrews. Ball provided many years of free legal counsel and lobbying on behalf of the Harris County Navigation District and earned local acclaim as the "Father of the Port." The town of Tomball, established in north Harris County on the Trinity and brazos Valley Railroad which Ball represented, was named for him. After a narrow defeat in the 1914 Texas Democratic Gubernatorial Primary, Ball practiced law in Houston and in 1923 was appointed counsel of the Harris County Navigation District. Ball died on May 7, 1944, and is buried in Houston's Forest Park Cemetery. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — 4.4 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 4.8 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 5.2 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 6.1 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• "Constitution" Bend — steps away
• Lorenzo de Zavala — 0.8 mi
• Site of General Offices, Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad — 1.9 mi
• Glendale Cemetery — 2.2 mi