SYLVESTER ALLEN BALLOU FAMILY

Sylvester A. Ballou was a direct descendant of Maturin Ballou, one of the founders of Rhode Island. He was born in Galway N.Y. in 1828. His father, Isaac Albee Ballou, and family moved to Breckenridge, Ohio, in 1832 where he was a farmer and maker of shoes. “Ves,” as Sylvester was called, taught school from 1848-9, when he and his brother Volney, sailed around Cape Horn to try their luck in the gold fields, where they arrived in August, 1850.

The brothers walked to Cold Springs, El Dorado Country, “a teeming hive of gold seekers”, where Ves became a leading citizen. He founded a Lyceum and the first public library in California in 1853. That year he was elected to the State Assembly in Benicia and made chairman of a committee to investigate sites for a permanent capitol. Ballou’s 7-page document recommending Sacramento, as well as many bills he sponsored, are in the California Archives.

In the summer of 1854 he returned to Naperville where his father had purchased a farm, south of the second bridge along the DuPage River In the spring of 1855 he and his brother Orlando returned to California, living near Quincy where they prospected along the Feather River and packed supplies to the miners’ camps. He was the first teacher in the Pioneer school there, now a California landmark.

In 1858 Ballou was elected to the Assembly again. Newspapers praised him as a hard-working and principled legislator, a capable committee chairman, an effective orator and the best parliamentarian in the house. He was famous for his unflinching stand on the question of statehood for Kansas, emphasizing popular sovereignty rather than his anti-slavery convictions.

In 1859 Ballou was elected to the Senate from Butte and Plumas Counties. His speeches, significant for their intelligent and moral reasoning and also popular for their witty and ironic cast, were often printed on the front pages of the Sacramento and San Francisco papers.

When the legislature was over in 1860, Ballou, convinced that war was imminent, returned to Naperville. He joined the Union Army, became a. major serving in Missouri, Georgia and Tennessee, and won praise as being “not only wise, active and efficient, but thoroughly honest.”

In June 1865 he married 20-year-old Julia Barnard and they returned to San Francisco to fulfill his appointment as Chief Commissary Officer of the Army, Department of California. They came back to Naperville in 1866 and their son, Ray, was born the following year. Julia died of pneumonia in 1869.

In 1871 he rented his farm and went to Indian Territory where he engaged in building the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad. In 1873 he returned to California by train (5˝ days) and wrote articles for the Naperville Clarion on the great changes in that country. In 1874 his father, Isaac Albee, went to live with his brother; Volney in Santa Rosa, California.

Ves proposed to Eliza Norton in a 6-stanza poem. She was the daughter of Mary and Michael Norton of Irish decent, a beautiful 26-year-old school teacher in the Ellsworth School, with a lively personality. They were married on Jan. 12, 1875. The only time they were separated during their 24 years was when Ves joined the silver rush to Leadville, Colorado, in 1879, an unsuccessful mining venture. They had 4 children, Ralph, Mary Eloise (May) and the twins, Alice and Edith. May married Bernard C. Beckman Oct 24, 1900. Their 3 daughters were Bernice (Mrs. Stuart S. Ball), Eleanor (Mrs. Albert R. Martin) and Sylvia (Mrs. Robert Warner).

Ves enlarged the home he had built for Julia into a fine house, still standing, surrounded by numerous tall condominiums. He bought a second farm adjoining his to the north, running up the road of the second bridge. (The children attended the little red school house that stood across the river to the north.) He found many arrowheads when turning over those fields for the first time. The tenant farmer lived on this farm and there were hired hands when extra help was needed. He kept a journal noting the weather and planting of crops.

The Ballou family had a merry life with games, spelling bees, and constant reading. There was a pleasant social life between the Ballous and other gentlemen farmers south of town, the Greens, the Barnards and the Royces. They moved to Naperville about 1890, the corner of Brainard and Highland Ave.
The Martin Mitchell Museum has the canvas covered truck that Ballou took around Cape Horn, his tall silk hat that he wore to the legislature in California, and the field desk that accompanied him throughout the Civil War

 
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z