My Ballard Family History

I have always been interested in my ancesters, hearing stories and wondering about who they were, I was further inspired by my uncle Harold Ballard who had portrayed through the family that our forebears were aristocracy and were widely recorded, He had an antique library acquired over the years through his demolition business and by attending auctions and buying up old books from country homes, as it would turn out the Ballard's he would be referring to were probably those of the Angolo/Norman family of Ballard's derived from "Bosc-le- Hardd" (Y DNA type R-P312) France and mybe they were not, wondering how are family could have fallen so far in stature, believing this to be our ancestry was also a driver to discover why.

My father John Ballard had left me some clues to follow in that family tradition, carried down, relayed that we were Roman, well we dont carry a "typical" Y DNA Roman type but what is likely is that we attached ourselves to Roman culture as British Citizens of Rome during the Roman occupation of Briton, alternately we were of the followers of King Brutus who was Roman. On that premise myself and my brothers were named after Romans with one exception, that being named after his buisiness partner and freind.

My Grandfather, Edward (Thomas) Ballard, who died before I was born regulary spent periods of time in London "with family" and to work, specifically in "Southwark" South London, where he was also, for a short period of time during the 1920's, serving in the Metrolpolitan Police at Southwark, London, a place that was always mentioned as an hive of family activity, I was later to find that my Ballard family had regulary migrated there back and fourth, going back many generations, It would seem there was a natural draw to that area and also Islington in North London.

My father had told me that my family had followed the Baptist tradition and said there were Quaker connections too.

Another intriguing snipped from him was that when he had visited a dentist for a tooth extraction the dentist remarked with some surprise on how my father's teeth were un common in England and anthropologically they were more in line with Greek populations.

Well there were a lot of mysteries and secrets in my family so i could not resist the challenge and in 1996 I started in earnest to take the task in hand, in the good old days before internet and ancestry websites, visiting record offices and churches, it was a long and labourious task but introduced me to documents and sources not found on later to come web source databases giving me an advantage in scrutiny when It came to later works of family trees that had only relied upon internet offerings to construct them.

Not being academically indoctrinated, "huh um",  organising source data, was a task for me, but the relentless work of data collection and constructing a searchable file system, as been my saviour, on this mostly, complex and confusing journey.

It did not take me long to find the Baptists and they became my greatest obstacle, as they do not, baptise their children and practice "Believers Baptism" I was fortunate in that my Bristol Ballard's Baptist's were all to be found together and after some difficulties was able to connect them, but taking this back further was very difficult.

Hitting a brick wall in my research at this point and in my frustration I started to trace Ballard's back from the beginnings, from source, from when the name Ballard would first appear in written records.

From this research I was able to identify various independent Ballard family origins,  Those that were Norman from Bosc Le Hardd, (R-P312) that settled in England, Another line from North Italy,  Bellardi who settled London, Parish and the Netherlands, another family from Holland, Bollard, that settled Ireland (R-P312) and numerous others from the Netherlands that also entered England at different times, French Huguenots, Anglo/Saxon (R-U106) and no doubt some indigenous Ballard lines to numerous to mention here.

to finish....................................

Family Tree @ WIKITREE