William Ballard, c.1750–1812

A Life Narrative

Compiled from parish, military, and burial records. Where evidence is direct, it is stated as fact; where a connection rests on strong circumstantial grounds, this is noted in the text.

Origins

William Ballard was born around 1750, almost certainly in Bristol. No baptism record survives for him — consistent with a Nonconformist, likely Baptist, family that did not practise infant baptism. His birth year is triangulated from three independent records that agree closely with one another:

• His 1771 marriage licence, in which he swore he was "21 years and upward" (implying birth before 1750)

• His 1783 army discharge, giving his age as 31 (implying birth c. 1751/52 — military ages are often rounded and less reliable)

• His 1812 burial record, giving his age as 62 (implying birth c. 1750)

Taken together, these point confidently to a birth year of 1749 or 1750.

His father was very likely James Ballard (c.1711–1812), a conclusion resting on strong circumstantial grounds: James was buried at Broadmead Baptist burial ground on 30 April 1812, in the very same plot as William — "11 West, close to South" — less than three months after William's own burial there on 3 February 1812. No document states the relationship outright, but after an exhaustive search of every Ballard entry in Bristol's surviving records, no other candidate fits, and the shared, precisely-matched plot location is a compelling form of proof in its own right.

Kings Stanley and Ann Lusty

By the late 1760s, William was living in Kings Stanley, Gloucestershire, in the heart of the Stroud valleys' woollen cloth country. He worked as a wool-scribbler — employed in a scribbling mill, roughly carding raw wool before it was spun, a trade more usually associated with children and the poor. Yet William's confident, competent signature on his 1771 marriage licence suggests a degree of literacy not typical of the very poorest labourers, raising the possibility that he had been apprenticed, or was otherwise placed in Kings Stanley away from his Bristol family — the precise circumstances remain unclear.

There he met Ann Lusty, baptised 23 January 1750 at Kings Stanley, daughter of Simon Lusty (himself son of Jonathan Lusty and Hannah Bendal) and Ann Harcombe (daughter of Nathaniel Harcombe and Jane Church). The Lustys were a long-established local family, extensively involved in the area's cloth trade for generations.

Their son John was born on 12 May 1770 — a date recorded nowhere but on the back of William's own marriage licence, in a handwritten note: "J B, 12th May 1770." No baptism was ever entered for him, as would be expected of a Baptist family, but a John Ballard of matching age later appears living in close association with William in Bristol, fitting nowhere else and corroborating the identification circumstantially.

William and Ann married by licence on 22–23 February 1771, at the parish church, Kings Stanley — both of age, both unmarried, both "of this parish." William signed his own name; Ann made her mark. The witnesses were John Church and Richard Aldridge. That William was already 21 by February 1771, having fathered John the previous May, suggests the couple may simply have been waiting until William came of age, since neither needed parental consent once he had.

Marriage and Loss

The couple appear to have returned to Bristol not long after marrying. Between 1770 and 1776, Ann bore at least five children:

• John, b. 12 May 1770

• William, b. 1772 (later recorded as an adult baptism, 1796, St Philip & Jacob, Bristol, aged 24 — son of "Wm & Ann Ballard, Serviceman")

• A child, b. c.1773, who died young and was buried at Broadmead, 19 March 1775, described as "poor"

• Joseph, b. 1775

• A daughter, b. 1776

None were baptised as infants, consistent with the family's Nonconformist convictions.

Then, on 3 October 1777, Ann herself died and was buried at Broadmead, alongside the child lost two years before. The burial record notes William "interred his wife where his child was interred, very poor" — suggesting the family was, by this point, in real financial hardship, likely receiving parish or congregational assistance with the burial costs. William was left a widower in his late twenties, with at least four surviving young children.

Gibraltar

Later that same year, 1777, William enlisted in the British Army, joining the 39th Regiment of Foot.

Two years later, the regiment — already stationed at Gibraltar since 1769 — found itself at the centre of one of the most famous sieges in British military history. From June 1779 to February 1783, the Great Siege of Gibraltar saw the garrison, some 5,000–7,000 men under General George Eliott, withstand blockade and bombardment by a combined Spanish and French force of tens of thousands, backed by a fleet of nearly fifty ships of the line and floating batteries. For long stretches the garrison endured severe shortages of food and fuel, scurvy, and continuous bombardment — reportedly up to 6,000 shells a day at the height of the siege. William's own regiment, the 39th, was among those in the thick of it, encamped in the South Port Ditch during the climactic assault of September 1782, when the massed Spanish and French floating batteries were destroyed in a day-long artillery duel.

William's own regimental musters place him with the 39th at Gibraltar continuously through the siege — with Captain John Mercier's company in 1778–79, then Captain Hugh Tuite's company from 1780 through to his discharge in October 1782 (final muster 25 June–24 December 1782, discharged 24 October).

The siege cost William dearly: he lost a leg. He was formally discharged on 7 April 1783, aged 31 (by the pension record), after four years and nine months' service, and awarded a pension. That same record gives his origin as "born at Bristol," and — interestingly, at odds with his earlier trade — his occupation as "Shoemaker" rather than scribbler, whether reflecting a genuine change of trade in the intervening years or simply an inaccuracy in the record.

Bristol, and Beginning Again

William returned home to Bristol a discharged, pensioned, disabled veteran, a widower with children to raise. Rather than remaining alone, he rebuilt a family life over the following decades, marked by repeated remarriage and repeated loss:

• 3 February 1784 — married Sarah Davies (née Thomas), widow of Thomas Davies, a butcher, at St Philip & Jacob, Bristol. Sarah had been baptised 16 December 1744 at Temple Church, daughter of William Thomas and Sarah Whything.

• 6 April 1784 — admitted to the liberties (Freedom) of the City of Bristol through this marriage, described as a "Scribbler," paying a fine of 40 shillings.

• 1787 — renting a house on New Street, St Philip & Jacob, at £2/12s a year.

• 21 November 1787 — daughter Mary Ann baptised at St Philip & Jacob (father recorded as "William Ballard, Scribbler, of New Street"). She died of smallpox aged 2, buried 20 December 1789.

• 14 January 1791 — Sarah died, aged 47, of "rheumatic gout," and was buried at St Philip & Jacob.

• 23 January 1793 — married Hannah Thorne, a widow and fellow woolstapler (a dealer in sheep hides/wool), at St Michael's, Bristol. William himself is here recorded as a "Woolstapler."

• 15 June 1795 — Hannah died, aged 27, and was buried at Broadmead Baptist burial ground.

• 18 July 1799 — married a fourth time, to Elizabeth Smith, at St Michael's, Bristol.

Elizabeth outlived him. After William's death she remarried John Millard, a butcher, in 1812; following Millard's own death in 1815, his probate in 1818 was witnessed by William Ballard, Cordwainer — one of William senior's own sons, carrying his father's name into the next generation.

Death

William Ballard, described as "a Pensioner," aged 62, of the parish of St Philip's, died and was buried at Broadmead Baptist burial ground, Redcross Street, Bristol, on 3 February 1812 — burial fees of 10s 6d paid, his grave recorded as "11 yards West, close to South."

Less than three months later, on 30 April 1812, James Ballard, aged "100 years & 6 months," of St Philip's, was buried in the very same plot.

William was survived by children from his marriage to Ann Lusty — John, William, Joseph, and at least one daughter — as well as by his fourth wife, Elizabeth. His life spanned a working boyhood trade in the Cotswold wool country, marriage and young fatherhood, the devastating loss of his first wife and at least two children, four and a half years of siege warfare and the loss of a leg at Gibraltar, and nearly three decades more of civilian life in Bristol, marked by two further widowings before his own death at 62 — an unusually long life for a man who had already survived so much by the time he came home from the Rock.

Compiled from: Kings Stanley marriage licence and bond (GRO Q2/24/39); Kings Stanley parish marriage register (GRO P190 in 1/10); Broadmead Baptist burial registers (BRO 30251/BD/RS/5; PRO RG 4, Piece 1827, 2871); 39th Regiment of Foot muster books (PRO WO 12/5246); Chelsea Pensioner service records (WO 120, Piece 14); Bristol Burgess Rolls; St Philip & Jacob and St Michael's parish registers, Bristol.