Mightier Acorns

The life and times of Mary Ann (Rupe) Ballard

A while back, we heard The Ballad of Mrs. Steele – a story about Frank Shuffler and Virgie Ballard, who survived Frank and went on to marry Orin Steele. Virgie was one of my wife’s sixteen great-great-grandparents.

We already know about some of the tragedies Virgie’s family survived, such as losing Frank to a train accident during World War I. But there seem to be other moments in her life that probably caused some trauma. And figuring out what happened may require reading between the lines of the records.

Isaac Ballard: Upstanding Citizen or Scoundrel?

Virgie Ballard’s father was Isaac Emmerson Ballard (1859-1923). He grew up in Iowa, moving with his family to Missouri around 1870. Isaac moved back to Iowa by 1880, when he lived with his widowed sister, Rachel Fredericks, and her three children in Glenwood, Mills County, Iowa. In 1885 he resided with his parents, who had moved to Pacific Junction in Plattville Township, Mills County, Iowa. Their neighbors were a family named Rupe.

Mary Ann Rupe was born on 3 Mar 1867 in Nebraska City, Nebraska. After Mary Ann married Isaac in 1886, they had five daughters, the youngest, Vivian, born in 1894. Isaac seemed to have steady work as a brakeman for the railroad, and served as a constable in Mills County. In 1896, he was elected as marshal of Pacific Junction, in addition to already serving as constable for Platteville township and the depot policeman for the C.B.&Q. railroad.

I.E. Ballard of Pacific Junction – “holds more police offices…than any other man in Mills county.” Article from Apr 16, 1896 The Opinion-Tribune (Glenwood, Iowa)

But despite the praise of his “efficiency and faithfulness,” trouble lay ahead. Isaac was sued in 1901 for false arrest, along with fellow constable Oliver Zorns and former Council Bluffs policeman Jack Pinnell. The complainant was a man named Joseph S. Scott who alleged that he and his father were arrested by the constables in October 1899 and were held overnight in an unheated room, leading to the untimely death of Scott’s father.¹

In May of 1901, Isaac was acquitted by a jury², but that did not end his problems. He was separated from his family on 15 April 1901, and he filed suit for divorce against Mary Ann “on a charge of abandonment” in December 1903.

Despite the fact that Isaac sued Mary Ann for abandonment, events suggest there was more to the story than that. He soon remarried Edna May Purvis (1879–1972) on 18 Jul 1904 in St Joseph, Missouri, and they moved to Oakland, California, where Isaac was working as a switchman for the railroad. In 1912, the couple had twins, a boy and a girl, before moving back to St. Joseph by 1920.

When Isaac died there in 1923, his obituary only mentioned his second family:

“Isaac E. Ballard, 51 years old, died at his home near Lake school at 3:15 oclock [sic] Monday afternoon. He is survived by his wife, one son, and one daughter, Ellis and Evelyn Ballard, and one brother, James, at Battlett [sic], Iowa. Ballard was a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen lodge No. 92. Funeral services will be held from the family home at 2 oclock Wednesday afternoon. Burial will be in Ashland cemetery.”

While we may not know the circumstances, we can tell that the breakup of the Ballard family left Mary Ann and her daughters to get by on their own. The fact that none of his living daughters were mentioned in his obituary suggests a deeper story that isn’t in the available records.

Before I create an idea of what kind of person Isaac was, though, I need to see what I can learn about Mary Ann.

The Rupe Family

Mary Ann was the oldest daughter of James Douglas Rupe (1842–1916) and Amanda Jane Martin (1845–1906). She grew up with two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Another sister, Jennie, was born in 1880, but appears to have died in infancy.

James Rupe was a private in the Confederate army, according to his gravesite record in Glenwood Municipal Cemetery, but because there was more than one James Rupe serving in the Confederate army from Missouri units, I don’t know which one he was. I also don’t know exactly when or where he married Amanda Martin; the 1900 Census says they were married in 1864, and Mary Ann, their eldest, was born in Nebraska in 1867.

James was a farm laborer, and he took the family to live in Green Township, Nodaway County, Missouri, near Maryville, when Mary was small. Her sister, Sarah Margaret, was born there in 1871, but by 1875, the Rupes had returned to Mills County, and Mary Ann’s siblings were born in Pacific Junction. All of them remained in Iowa, and most of them had large families of their own.

• Sarah Margaret (Rupe) Fitch (1871–1948) married Simeon Fitch in 1900, and they had two sons and a daughter before Simeon died in 1916. This was Simeon’s second marriage, and the oldest of his five children from the first marriage was a year younger than Sarah.
• John Redmond Rupe (1875–1945) and Samuel Levi Rupe (1881–1947) married sisters, Henrietta and Elma Livengood. John and Elma had two children, plus Elma’s two sons from her first marriage to Allan Arnold (1863-1904). Samuel and Etta had nine children between 1901 and 1923.
• Louella (Rupe) Hill (1877–1949) married Sherman Henry Hill (1868–1926) in 1895, and they had eleven children, ten of whom survived to adulthood.

All of which suggests that Mary Ann’s children had a lot of kin nearby when they were growing up. So, how did Isaac’s and Mary Ann’s daughters fare?

The Ballard Daughters

Virgie’s older sister was Florence Ballard (1887-1964). Florence married Hart Mantor Allen at age 16 in October 1903, but by 1905, Florence was living alone under her maiden name in Glenwood. Mr. Allen remarried in California in 1908 (to another woman named Florence), so it seems likely that this first marriage during the same time frame that her parents were divorcing may have been what we would call “acting out” today. Florence married a second time in 1917. She and William Kim (1881-1952) did not have any children of their own, and they moved to Salem, Oregon, by 1920, where they remained for the rest of their lives.

Bessie M. Ballard (1891-1975) married Daniel J Aalberg (1882–1963) on 26 Nov 1908 in Minnehaha County, South Dakota, where they raised a their family of two sons and three daughters. Bessie and Daniel divorced during the 1930s. Dan Sr. was remarried to Mrs. Myra Baker by 1940, and Bessie married Alfred P Thorvalson in 1936 in Minnesota. Their children were mostly grown by then, with their three eldest married with families of their own (Hobert, Virginia Fenner, and Lorraine Morris), and Dan Jr. in the Army at Fort Francis E Warren Military Reservation, Laramie, Wyoming. Their youngest, Gwendoline, lived with her sister, Mrs. Lorraine Morris, in 1940.

Virgie’s youngest sister, Vivian, married Bert Glancy Gatch (1889-1964) in 1912, after she turned 18, and the couple moved to Sonoma, California, during the 1920s. They never had children of their own.

Virgie had one last sister: Hattie Ballard, born December 1892. She appeared in the 1895 and 1900 Census with her family, but I wasn’t able to find her in the records after 1900. Some of the unsourced information I can find on Ancestry gives a date of death on 10 July 1902, which I can’t confirm. But, if their 10-year-old daughter died in that summer, it’s plausible to think that the trauma of that loss could have been what drove a wedge between Isaac and Mary Ann and lead to their divorce the following year.

Left With Speculation

Sometimes, even though we can find records to give us names, dates, and places, we are left with questions. Even when we have contemporary newspaper accounts, or if we had letters from the people involved, we can’t entirely trust the points of view expressed.

When that happens, answering questions like “What happened to their daughter?” or “Why did they divorce?” can only be answered by a best guess: speculation. And as long as we make it clear when we guess, that might be okay.

But we should always keep digging.

1. Newspapers.com, The Daily Nonpareil, Council Bluffs, Iowa; “Sues Officers For Damages“, Sat, Aug 25, 1900, Page 4. ↩︎
2. Newspapers.com, The Daily Nonpareil, Council Bluffs, Iowa; “In The District Court.” Wed, May 29, 1901, Page 4. ↩︎