Jane Walker, sometimes known as Jenny, was born 22
August 1820 probably at her
parents' home on Mulberry Creek and died between
2 June and 31 December in 1880 at Mound City in Linn
County, Kansas. She was the daughter of Edward
and Mahala (Tussey) Walker.
She married Shadrach D. Ball, usually called Shade,
who was born 25 August 1816 and died 20 November 1862
at Mound City. Shade was the son of George Washington
and Sarah (Moore) Ball. Both are buried in a family
cemetery in Mound City on land still owned by descendants.
The two married on 8 September 1836 probably at Mulberry.
Harold
Ball writes that Shadrach was born in Lee County,
Virginia; his family moved into Claiborne County when
he was about 8 or 9. He received a permit to preach
as a clergyman of the Methodist Church on 20 January
1848, signed by I. Drake, PC, and was a circuit rider
in Tennessee.
In late 1849 or early 1850, the family left for Izard
County, Arkansas, meeting up with members of the Ball
family who had moved earlier. Shade's father is thought
to have died along the way. The couple lost two children
by 1860. Harold cites Maggie Schasteen (1889-1977),
who said that Jane's son and her grandfather, Edward
Wiley Ball, told Maggie of the birth of his own daughter
Carrie Jane (born 2 November 1860) at the same time
that his sister Carrie Elizabeth lay dying in the same
cabin with beds foot-to-foot.
Shade continued his circuit-riding ministry in Arkansas.
Harold cites Shade's son Arthur's writings (January
1922), that: "My father was a Methodist Minister
and a mission man and was called a northern preacher
and feelings of neighbors ran high against him as a
Union Methodist preacher. My father saw the war clouds
rising more fierce every day. He saw that he must dispose
of his belongings in haste [in 1861]." Harold also
cites son Wiley as saying that friends of his father
told him that he had "best get out of Arkansas
if he was going to continue preaching the 'Abolitionist's
Gospel' and had any value on the condition on his throat."
He continues citing Arthur: "He and mother conveyed
the idea to some of their neighbors that they intended
to go across the plains. They did this for safety, for
fear their enemies would follow them for ill intent.
The first day of our journey some of our neighbors came
with us until night, then we stopped for camp. My father
preached his fairwell sermon to them, bid them good-bye
and they went back home – but instead of going
across the plains, we started for Kansas. 'twas a long
journey as we drove oxen."
Arthur recorded that the family ended up in Bourbon
County, a few miles east of Mapleton, in 1861, where
the oxen were used to plant a corn crop. He and his
father left for Kansas City to get provisions for the
summer, a trip of about 75 miles one way, taking about
two weeks with the oxen. Arthur wrote, "When Sunday
came, my father stopped right there to rest until Monday
morning." In the winter of 1861, Shade bought land
about two miles west of the current location of Pleasantown
in eastern Kansas. Harold cites the 1865 tax records
for Linn County showing that Jane owned the southeast
quarter of southwest quarter and southern half of southwest
quarter of Section 27, Township 21 (Paris), Range 34.
Arthur continued to add land there and build a large
ranch which was held in the Ball family until the late
1900s.
Even in Kansas, the Balls were just a few miles west
of the Missouri line, and the family still feared for
their lives. Arthur wrote in 1922, "We would work
all day and when night came we would take our blankets,
go out in the prairie and sleep in the grass. The grass
grew high, three or four feet high, and a very good
place to hide. There were no roads, only a path occasionally
and no guide, only directions. We all had more use of
the North Star than we have nowadays."
Quantrill's Raiders roamed the area, and troops were
stationed in Mound City throughout the 1850s, with quite
a bit of guerilla warfare involving Kansas Jayhawkers
and Missouri Bushwackers occuring a number of years
before the actual start of the war. During the war,
the Battle of Mine Creek was fought only three miles
south of the Ball home in 1864. During the time in Kansas,
nothing is known of any further preaching by Shade.
Per Harold, in August of 1862, Shade decided that his
family might be safer by joining the Army. So he took
his sons, Edward Wiley, George W., and Arthur J., along
with his son-in-law, Thomas Bettes, to Mound City where
all joined Company K of the 12th Kansas Volunteers Regiment;
as Arthur was just 16, Shade had to sign a consent form.
Wiley did not pass the physical and was sent back home,
while the others were sent to Olathe, Kansas, for training.
Just three months later, Shade himself died at the
age of 46; the cause of death is not known. Both George
W. and Arthur received a furlough to go home, and they
walked from Paola, Miami County, Kansas, to their home
near Pleasanton in what would have been cold weather
[about 46 miles by modern road, perhaps shorter then].
By the end of the furlough, George was ill with pneumonia,
although, in her mother's pension, Jane stated that
he had contracted typhoid while still in camp. Arthur
returned alone, and George died at home.
Jane, having lost her husband and son in short order
and with another son and a son-in-law in the Army, filed
for a Mother's Pension, Number 12477, on 3 February
1863. The claim was eventually denied.
After the war, Jane married John Brooks. Citing court
records from Linn County in October 1868, Harold indicates
that she left him on 14 February 1867 because he "treated
her with coldness and neglect uterly failing to provide
her with the necessaries and reasonable comfort of life..[He]
often threatened her with personal violence and used
toward her insolent and abusive language... he persisted
in his abusive and unkind treatment..It was wholly unadvisable
and impossible... to any longer live with him."
John himself filed for divorce 16 July 1868, with the
decree granted 7 October 1868. Per the records, Jane
had considerable property and money before the marriage,
but he took all of it; she received nothing in the divorce
and was left nearly destitute for the rest of her life.
