The Balls in the 20th Century and Treasure Oak Island

The photos above left: Grandmother Laura Ball-List;

Centre Photo: left: Frederick Charles List (Laura’s second husband); seated, centre, Mary Elizabeth Ball-List and right: Howard Ball-List (Children of Laura Ball-List) the writer’s aunt and uncle;

Right Photo: Mae Winifred Ball-Boyd, the writer’s mother and daughter of Laura Ball-List.

Top centre Photo: The Wedding of Anne Jones to Howard Ball-List and in the back row on the left is: the Best Man, Bertrand Ball-Flint, Howard’s brother and both are uncles to the writer. The Matron of Honor, Ellen Callender-Johnston, Deacon Ralph Jones, the bride’s father, and the flower girl is the writer’s sister, Juanita M. Ball-Boyd-Seale.


A tragic aspect of this story is that my grandmother, Laura Ball, who died on February 26, 1936 in Halifax, never saw my mother’s first born, Juanita, my sister and her granddaughter, who was born six (6) months after her death, on 13 August 1936. As remarkable a woman as she was grandmother Laura did not live to see any of her youngest daughter’s children from her second marriage to Halifax teamster, Frederick Charles List, who arrived in Nova Scotia from Chatham, Ontario, he was a product of the underground railway. See his photo above with my Aunt Elizabeth and my Uncle Howard.

I cannot make peace with this subject until my grandmother’s character and memory is more fully described and preserved. Grandmother Laura was a determined woman who did not let life rule her; she ruled it. It would appear that both the Ball and Boyd women were strong personalities; perhaps back in the day they just came made that way. When it came to the home the women ruled the roost. Grandmother Laura Ball was as remarkable in as many ways as was Samuel, her grandfather. As a wife she gave birth to two families with very different but altogether gifted men: first Will Flint and then Frederick Charles List.

She managed to inspire all of her children and she deserves to be remembered as a family builder without who work the foundations of our family would not be the same. Laura was a dedicated mother who shouldered responsibility for her children and taught them the Christian way.

I cannot pinpoint in time exactly when I discovered the connection to the truth of my mother’s story, but I know it occurred on a research trip to the Public Archives of Nova Scotia and my chance introduction to Miss Helen Creighton, a now famous Nova Scotia folklorist. I cannot remember who did the introduction. It was on this occasion in the early 1970’s when I uttered to her my mother’s introduction to the subject of Oak Island.

My mother’s people came from treasure Oak Island in Chester and my mother’s maiden name was Ball. I looked at her and I saw a light go on. Helen said there was a settler on Oak Island by the name of Samuel Ball, a black man, and she gave me a citation to a book and an archival source, which confirmed it.

I stood corrected by my mother and not for the first time. I remember calling her on the telephone full of excitement. I admitted that she was right about treasure Oak Island. I also admitted that at the time I did not believe it but that I had become a convert.

I know she was delighted by the confirmation and I felt so proud to have been able to admit my error and to let her know that our family had made a certain historical achievement.

Then, again, it really did not need the confirmation because I always knew that my family lived in the ‘Hood but I also had the firmest conviction that my family was not of it.

In fact I have always known that there was something of greater significance to my family and only time would prove that conviction right and the Oak Island confirmation was just the beginning.

It is all the more fitting that as I write this story I sit on grandmother Laura’s old, oak Bass-River-type chair which is older than I am, but whose legs have been shorten by a fire that occurred at grandmother’s residence, a flat, at 106 Maitland Street Halifax. The fire shortened the legs of the chair and they were leveled by a saw in the patient hands of a doctor. As I said, this is all the more fitting because now in my elder years I am sitting closer to the ground; I am well grounded in the reality of who I am and my knowledge of self and family is growing daily in leaps and bounds.

As always, Well wishes,

F. Stanley Boyd