Frederick Hooker Ball Photograph Collection

Frederick Hooker Ball Photograph Collection

Ball, Frederick Hooker, 1870-1940

Photograph albums

Black and white photographs

Frederick H. Ball and his wife, Merill Proctor Ball, lived in the Peyton Randolph House in Williamsburg, Virginia in the early twentieth-century. Ball served as a general manager of the Piedmont & Tide-Water Land Company. His wife inherited the Peyton Randolph House from her mother and sold it to Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. in 1938 under a life tenancy agreement.

Photo album compiled by Frederick H. Ball and two additional mounted photos relating to the Ball family. The album consists of fifty black and white photos of buildings, landscapes, and people in various parts of Virginia. Photos of buildings in Williamsburg include Person’s Garage, the J.R. Daly House, the C&O Railroad Depot, the old Debtor’s Prison, the Marshall House, Bassett Hall, Bruton Parish Church, Nicholson School, the Wren Building, and the Peyton Randolph House. Notable events recorded in the photographs include a large group of African Americans assembled for a boat launching on Queen’s Creek and a Washington’s Birthday celebration at Nicholson School. The album also includes a photo of Rosewell Plantation before it was damaged by fire in 1916. Two mounted black and white photos depict Mary Gertrude Ball, mother of Gertrude Daversa, a life tenant of the Peyton Randolph House, and F.H. Ball’s office with the “Daily Times” in Lorain, Ohio.

1898-1911

Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation