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Welcome one & all, to the Ball Family Genealogy Site!! I'm about to share a journey that was taken in researching the Ball surname. My story starts in a tiny rugged community of Recontre West, along the south west coast of Newfoundland. This community was thriving at one time with lots of fish. There was once a church & school but no more. Around 1946 resettlement came along the coast, hitting all the tiny communities. It had to be hard for families to leave there homes behind, only taking what they could carry by boat, which left the rest for nature to distory. But today in Recontre West some homes have been restored & used as cabins. Other neighboring communities like Parson's Harbour( New Harbour), Richard's Harbour didn't. The only thing remaining today is cemetary's to tell the story of the people who once lived there. It's so sad to see the history of our ancestors left in such a way. They may be gone, but not forgotten. Their memories are still alive in their family members left behind.
The information you will see is on a Ball Family that settled in Recontre West, in the early 1800 hunreds. Recontre West was a fishing settlement along the south west coast of Newfoundland.
We all may have a an experinece where your name was misspelled, perhaps on a nameplate or in a letter. There have been many typical misspelling or pronunciation errors associated with the Ball surname. It can hit you personally because the Ball name is your possession & identity, which lets the whole world know who you are. Historically, the Ball name served as a finger point of your life, maybe it's a clue to one's personality. They say the knowledge of naming practices came from our ancestors country. This lets us trace back to where our ancestors's lived & what they looked like.
The surname Ball is a rare name that appears to be patronymic in origin. Some records indicates that it can be associated with the English & Germans, meaning " The Son Of Baldwin". While reasearching the Ball surmane, there was difficulty in finding the exact spelling which we use today. In fact it may been misspelled differently hundreds of years ago. It may have been changed by our ancestor's years before us. In tracing the Ball surname it was found to have many different spellings. Ex. Balle, Balls, Balles, & Bull. The change in spelling may have happened due town clerks spelling it the way it sounds, or man himself didn't know how to spell his own name, or maybe it changed so natives wouldn't know they where foreigners.
Knowing there were different spellings, for the same original surname. It wasn't surprising that the dictionaries of surnames indicate there were probable spelling variations in the Ball surname. Althrough the Ball name comprises of a small percentage of indivduals living in Canada today.
The Ball surname offered substantial clues to my history, by the first & middle names. This can be valuable in tracing your Family Tree. Theres one thing that will be noticed about my Family Tree, first & middle names may repeat through each generation.
