Adonijah Ball
Adonijah Ball was born in Tennessee in June 1816. The month and year come from the 1900 census, taken when he was 84. Earlier censuses gave his age loosely: 29 in 1850, 46 in 1860 and 60 in 1880. In 1880 he said both his parents had been born in Virginia. He went by Nige all his life. Clerks wrote his name as Adonijah in 1850, Adaniga in 1860, A. D. in 1880, and Nige or Vigle on his children's death certificates. He could not write his name, and signed his deed with a mark.
He farmed in Cocke County, Tennessee, in the mountain country along the North Carolina line, where Big Creek runs down into the French Broad River near Del Rio. His wife was Mary, called Polly, born in North Carolina about 1822. Four of their children named their mother as Mary or Polly Hall on their death certificates, so Hall was her maiden name.
In 1850 the family was in Cocke County: Adonijah, 29, Mary, 26, and their children Nancy J., 7, John, 6, Maranda, 3, and Samuel L., 1. By 1860 they were in the eighth civil district with Mary J., 18, John, 16, Maranda, 14, Samuel, 12, Martha, 9, Ausborn, 6, Mary, 5, and a baby, Dica. Three others lived with them that year: Nancy Ball, 60, born in North Carolina, Sarah Ball, 23, and a boy of 4, John Furney. The census of 1860 did not say how any of them were related to the head of the house.
In June 1880 A. D. Ball, 60, was farming in the thirteenth civil district, the Grassy Fork country. With him and Mary, 58, were their daughters Mary, 20, Sarah S., 17, and Rhoda, 16, their sons Joseph, 12, and Thornton, 7, and three grandchildren, Nancy Jane, 13, Andrew, 10, and John, 7. In the next dwelling were William and Miranda, written Messer by the census taker, with seven children. Beyond them lived his son John Ball, 37, who ground corn for a living, with his wife Mourning and their five children.
Most of what is known of his children comes from the death certificates they left in the twentieth century. John, a farmer, died at Hartford in 1927 and was buried in the Messer Cemetery. Dice James died at Hartford on 9 January 1928, aged 70. Alice, who never married, died at Hartford in 1936 and was buried in the Bullington Cemetery. Thornton died in 1951, aged 84. Each certificate named Nige Ball, or Vigle Ball, as the father and Polly or Mary Hall as the mother.
On 23 January 1893 Nige and Polly sold their son Thornton a share of the family land. The deed covered about 25 acres on the waters of Big Creek, in the fifteenth district, described as part of an old Ball entry. An entry was the claim a settler filed with the state to take up vacant land, so the tract had been in the family since it was first claimed. Nige was paid $20. A Nancy Ball sold her share of the same tract for another $20 and signed with them. The bounds ran from a birch by the branch to a black pine, a chestnut, a white oak and a holly, along the lines of Jane Green, Manyan Ball and Joe Ball. Nige, Polly and Nancy each made a mark. J. O. Bullington and Samuel James, the husband of Dica, signed as witnesses.
Polly did not live to see the deed acknowledged. On 18 December 1894 the two witnesses went before the deputy clerk, M. H. Bibee, at Newport. They swore "that they were acquainted with Polly Ball wife of Nige Ball during her life time that she is now dead", and that she had acknowledged the deed in their presence. Thornton had it recorded on 1 June 1897.
Nige outlived her by many years. In June 1900, a widower of 84, he was living in the thirteenth civil district in the household of his grandson Walter Ball, 20. Martha Ball, 46, Mary Ball, 40, Alice Ball, 30, and a girl, Alice M. Ball, 12, lived there too. Martha, Mary and Alice match his daughters of those names by age. A family tree gives his death as 1 November 1908, in Cocke County. Tennessee did not yet register deaths, and his grave has not been identified.
Merinda Ball, who married Bill Cagle about 1864, was very probably his daughter. She was the Maranda in his household in 1850 and 1860, the only girl of that name and age in the county. In 1880 she and Bill lived in the next house to his, and she told the census taker her father was born in Tennessee and her mother in North Carolina, as Nige and Polly were. Her own daughter Mary Cagle spent her last years with Ragan James, a son of Dica, and died in his home in 1954. No record of the time names Nige as her father in so many words.
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Cite: Heirology, "Adonijah Ball (b. 1816)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/adonijah-ball-1816-f79420.