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Collection Details:
Creator/Collector: Henry Waring Ball.
Date(s): 1884-1911; 1913-1934; n.d.
Size: 1.00 cubic feet.
Language(s): English and French.
Processed by: MDAH staff; Reprocessed by Laura Heller, 2023.
Provenance: Gift from Hebe Crittenden of Greenville, MS, and Dan L. Smythe of Leland, MS, on August 23, 1976; Z/U/1976.045.
Repository: Archives & Records Services Division, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.
Rights and Access:
Access restrictions: Collection is open for research, however, original diaries are fragile. Microfilm copy must be used.
Publication rights: Copyright assigned to the MDAH. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to Reference Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the MDAH as the owner of the physical items and as the owner of the copyright in items created by the donor. Although the copyright was transferred by the donor, the respective creator may still hold copyright in some items in the collection. For further information, contact Reference Services.
Copyright Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).
Preferred citation: Henry Waring Ball Diaries, Z/1841.000/S, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.
See also:
Henry Waring Ball Typescripts, Z/0324.000/S, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.
Henry Waring Ball Letters, Z/1842.000/S, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.
Biography/History:
Henry Waring Ball was born to Lavinia Bateman (1830-) and Dr. Spencer Mottrom (1826-1888) on November 3, 1859, at Argyle Plantation near Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi. He was a descendant of Mary Ball Washington, mother of George Washington. Ball had one sister, Lavinia Ball Yerger (1860-1952), and two brothers, William Lee Ball (1864-1889) and Spencer Mottram Ball, II (1861). The latter died in infancy.
Henry Waring Ball attended a preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland, and later graduated from the law school of the University of Virginia. He practiced law at Clarendon, Arkansas, but later left because of the presence of yellow fever in the area. Ball moved to Greenville to be near his father, and he became a journalist and newspaper editor. During his career, he was associated with The Greenville Times, Greenville, Mississippi; The Vicksburg Daily American, Vicksburg, Mississippi; and The Meridian Star, Meridian, Mississippi. He was also the city and telegraph editor of The Vicksburg Herald. From the 1870s to the 1890s, Ball would comment in his diaries about his romantic relationships with specific men, including his neighbor William Armstrong Percy. Considering the societal conventions of the time, men were able to have same-sex emotional or physical relationships without the stigma of being homosexual, as author Benjamin E. Wise states in his book titled William Alexander Percy: The Curious Life of a Mississippi Planter and Sexual Freethinker (2014).
Henry Waring Ball married Eleanor Carter Randolph (1870-1955) on April 27, 1916, at Inness Hill, in Warrenton, Virginia. Ball retired from the newspaper business in 1919 to manage his plantation near Leland, Mississippi. He died in Greenville on June 21, 1934, and was buried in the Greenville Cemetery.
Scope and Content:
The collection contains fourteen holographic diaries written by Henry Waring Ball beginning in 1884 while he was living in Clarendon, and ending shortly before his death in Greenville, in 1934. Some of the diaries, originally written in French for privacy, were later translated into English. In nearly every volume, there are many diary entries have been marked out, erased, or torn out altogether.
Included with the diaries is a fifteenth volume containing the genealogical history of the Ball and allied families of Virginia, including Randolph and Carter families. Several copies of wills dating from 1694 to 1795 are also included. Ball also provides a description of the antebellum plantation, Woodstock, located near the Mississippi River in Washington County, Mississippi, which describes the effects of the Civil War on the plantation and its enslaved persons.
Typescripts for the genealogical volume and portions of the diaries are located in the Henry Waring Ball Typescripts (Z/0324.000). The diary portions in the typescripts are January 1, 1884-May 22, 1888 and January 22, 1892-September 2, 1894 from volume 1 (January 1, 1884-September 2, 1894); September 28, 1894-January 21, 1895 from volume 2 (September 28, 1894-May 30, 1897); and February 13, 1899-October 6, 1899 from volume 4 (February 13, 1899-December 26, 1900). During the process of creating the transcripts, Ball may have intentionally omitted or edited diary entries.
Series Identification:
The collection contains fourteen holographic diaries written by Henry Waring Ball beginning in 1884 while he was living in Clarendon, and ending in June 1934 shortly before his death in Greenville. Some of the diaries, originally written in French for privacy, were later translated into English. A few diary entries have been marked out, erased, or torn out altogether.
The diaries of Henry Waring Ball are perhaps most important in the documentation they provide about upper-class life in Arkansas and Mississippi during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His diaries reveal the rich and varied social life he enjoyed, particularly while living in the Mississippi Delta.
In addition to documenting his social activities, the diaries also contain many references to family matters, local gossip, personal finances, and weather data. The diaries also reveal the impact electric lighting, the levee board, yellow fever epidemics and quarantines, Mississippi River floods, the suffrage movement, and state and local politics had on life in the Mississippi Delta. Ball also recorded in his diary that he witnessed a lynching in Greenville, on June 5, 1903. Many of the diaries contain newspaper clipping obituaries, his published poems and articles, and other noteworthy news pasted on some pages. Ball also recorded a list of books he read, poems he committed to memory, and flowers planted in his garden.
The Henry Waring Ball diaries also reveal his close friendship with the Percy family of Greenville, and particularly his romantic interest in William Armstrong Percy. Ball also maintained a social friendship with historian Alfred Holt Stone.
It is interesting to note that Ball, while a close friend of the Percy family, was also acquainted with James K. Vardaman, who once wrote Ball from Santiago, Cuba, on February 11, 1899, to request his support in his Mississippi gubernatorial campaign. On the same day, Ball recorded in his diary that LeRoy Percy had drafted an article announcing that Andrew H. Longino was running for governor and that LeRoy was apparently disgusted with the political aspirations of Vardaman.
Box 1, Folder 1: Volume 1: January 1, 1884-September 2, 1894; n.d. (restricted)
Box 1, Folder 2: Volume 3: November 24, 1897-February 12, 1899; n.d. (restricted)
Box 2, Folder 1: Volume 8: March 12, 1913-December 16, 1924; n.d. (restricted)
Box 3, Folder 1: Volume 2: September 28, 1894-May 30, 1897; n.d. (restricted)
Box 3, Folder 2: Volume 5: December 31, 1900-December 21, 1903; n.d. (restricted)
Box 3, Folder 3: Volume 7: March 20, 1910-September 5, 1911; n.d. (restricted)
Box 3, Folder 4: Volume 6: December 26, 1903-March 18, 1910; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folder 1: Volume 14: December 28, 1931-June 15, 1934; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folder 2: Volume 11: September 6, 1927-March 31, 1929; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folder 3: Volume 9: October 6, 1921-October 14, 1925; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folders 4-5: Volume 10: November 25, 1925-September 5, 1927; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folder 6: Volume 13: April 1, 1930-December 25, 1931; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folder 7: Volume 12: April 1, 1929-March 31, 1930; n.d. (restricted)
Box 4, Folder 8: Volume 4: February 13, 1899-December 26, 1900; n.d. (restricted)
Included with the diaries is a genealogical history of the Ball and allied families of Virginia recorded in volume 15. Several copies of wills dating from 1694 to 1795 are also included. There is also a copy of a letter from Colonel James Ball to a nephew, Colonel Burgess Ball, dated September 11, 1789. Ball also provides a description of the antebellum plantation, Woodstock, located near the Mississippi River in Washington County, Mississippi. The description reveals the effects of the Civil War on the plantation and its enslaved persons.
Box 2, Folder 2: Volume 15: Genealogy Volume, Record of the Ball Family of Virginia, circa 1920s. (restricted)
Microfilm edition contents:
Microfilm Roll 36367: volumes 1-7
Microfilm Roll 36368: volumes 8-15