MUNCIE MORNING STAR, Monday, March 9, 1925
Yesterday afternoon Muncie lost her foremost citizen when Edmund Burke Ball died. Death came at the family home in Minnetrista boulevard shortly after 4 o'clock. Attending physicians gave heart trouble and chronic nephritis, aggravated by a stroke of paralysis suffered three months ago, as the cause of the death. Mr. Ball was stricken with paralysis while attending a luncheon meeting of the Rotary club on December 2 and his condition had been serious since that date, although for a time he appeared to be on the road to recovery and was able to leave his bed. For several days, however, his condition had been critical and his son, who is a student in Princeton University, and other relatives were summoned. At 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon it was known that death was near, and relatives were at the bedside when the end came.
Funeral services will be conducted from the First Presbyterian Church at 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, with the Rev. A.W. McDavitt of St. Johns Universalist Church, in charge. Services at the church will be conducted by the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, Valley of Indianapolis. The Knights Templar burial service will be conducted at the graveside in Beech Grove Cemetery. Mr. Ball was a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason, the highest rank in Masonry.
The immediate survivors are the wife, Mrs. Bertha Crosley Ball; one son, Edmund Ferdinand Ball; two daughters, Adelia and Janice Ball; three brothers, Frank C. Ball, George A. Ball and Dr. Lucius L. Ball, and one sister, Mrs. Frances Ball Mauck, of Hillsdale, Mich. Another brother, William C. Ball, died a few years ago. Besides the members of his family, Mr. Ball is survived by thousands of grieving friends--the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the prominent and the obscure. Muncie has never before lost a citizen who claimed so many friends from such wide fields. They were the men with whom he labored in his factory, the boys to whom he gave health and happiness, and lessons in citizenship at Camp Crosley; the business man with whom he dealt in his many and large business undertakings; his associates in civic enterprises; his friends in his clubs and lodges, and far from least, the hundreds of persons who benefited by his generous, but unadvertised, philanthropies.
Mr. Ball was vice-president and general manager of the Ball Brothers Company, which he helped to found and helped to develop into the largest industry of its kind in the world. Through his business genius and financial capacity, he became interested financially and officially, with numerous large industrial, commercial and utilities companies throughout the country. In most of these interests he was associated with his brothers. However, it was not for his business prominence, or his benefactions amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but E.B. Ball was best known and loved by his fellow citizens. Despite his innumerable personal duties, he gave bounteously of his time and energy to Muncie. Among his civic hobbies were the aiding of young people and the physical beautification, improvement of the city, and the Indiana State Normal School. The first hobby he satisfied largely through the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. and Camp Crosley, the Y.M.C.A. for boys at Lake Tippecanoe established by Mr. and Mrs. Ball in memory of their son, Clinton Crosley Ball, who died in 1912. The other hobby--beautification of his home city--Mr. Ball satisfied by years of work as a member of the city park board and of the city planning commission. Personally he directed much of the work done under these two units of the city government, and often when the city's financial inability threatened the progress of some effort, Mr. Ball personally overcame the obstacle.
The Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division, was the gift of Mr. Ball and his brothers to Indiana, and his enthusiasm and interest grew with and were largely responsible for the steady, healthy growth of the school. The educational system of this state, if not of the middle West, is thus a debtor to Mr. Ball. Although thousands of persons were, because of his many benefactions, indebted to Mr. Ball at least indirectly, no sense of this indebtedness was ever gained from him. The modesty and whole-heartedness of his acts made it a pleasure to be helped by him, even as it gave him pleasure to help. During the last two years of his life, Mr. Ball devoted all the time he could possibly spare from his business, often sacrificing some business engagement, to the building of the Ball gymnasium a the State Normal and the new Masonic Temple and the city's park system. After the Ball brothers made their gift for the Normal gymnasium, Mr. Ball took active charge of the construction work and never was there a day in which he was in Muncie that he did not spend part of the day at the Normal. He even helped to mix some of the concrete that went into the building. He saw the structure completed but his illness would not permit his attending the dedication. A similar interest was taken by Mr. Ball in the construction of the new Masonic Temple, which is now nearing completion. As a member of the committee in charge of the erection of this building, Mr. Ball put forth every effort to see that the Muncie Temple ranked with the best in the country and he was taking great interest in the progress of the work.
Much of the development of the city's park system is due to the personal effort put forth by Mr. Ball as a member of the board. He had great plans in the making for a more beautiful park system, which was to include a river boulevard running from the East Jackson street bridge to the Tillotson avenue bridge. As a park trustee and a member of the city planning commission, he took this matter in charge and personally secured the right-of-way for the project. His plans were approved by the plan commission and the board of works and the latter body now has the project well in hand with the prospect of an early start in the actual work. But this service to his community was in the every-day life of Mr. Ball and many are the instances now recalled of some kindly act by him. He reached out in all directions, and generally unexpectedly. On the route between Mr. Ball's home and the Ball factories there stands a small church. Mr. Ball passed it daily, and once noticed that the roof was in very poor shape. Arriving at his office he called the pastor of the church and informed him that a new roof was to be placed on the church. The next day the supplies arrived and carpenters set about to repair the building. Outside of the pastor, no member of the church knew how the new roof was secured. A few years ago while driving to the city, Mr. Ball noticed one of his employees having considerable trouble in taking sand from the river bottom with a scoop and team of horses. Mr. Ball stopped his car, waded into the river and helped the man solve his problem. Returning to the river bank he squeezed the water out of his trousers, jumped into his car and went on to his office. Such was the life of Mr. Ball--always ready and willing to give service where needed.
Mr. Ball was the son of Lucius Styles Ball and Maria P. Bingham Ball, and was born in Greensburg, Trumbull County, Ohio on October 21, 1855. Other children in the family were five sons, Lucius Lorenzo, William Charles, Edmund Burke, Frank Clayton, George Alexander and Clinton Harvey, and two daughters, Luciana (Lucina) A. and Frances May. Clinton Harvey Ball died at 2 years of age. Luciana (Lucina) A. Ball, eldest of the family, was an educator of remarkable ability. She assisted George W. Childs, editor and owner of the Philadelphia Ledger, in founding the Drexel Institute and was its financial secretary for a number of years. She died January 14, 1901. Edmund B. Ball's paternal ancestor was Edward Ball, who probably came from England in 1640, and located first at Brantford, Conn., and later settled in New Jersey. He was one of the founders of Newark, N.J. When Edmund Ball was 7 years old, his father and mother, with their seven children, moved to a farm on Grand Island; a large island in Niagara River. There were no railroads and so the family traveled by wagons. The farm was located at the foot of the island where the two forks of the river come together, four miles above the rapids. Here Edmund and his brothers learned to swim and handle a boat with great skill in the swift current. Two years later the family moved to Tonawanda, N.Y. After two years there the family moved to Canandaigua, N.Y., where the father engaged in the mercantile business, and the children attended the public schools in Canandaigua Academy. One summer Edmund worked as a farm hand and learned to do all the farm work from plowing and preparing the soil to harvesting and thrashing the grain. In the winter of 1878 he went into the pine woods of Michigan and cut timber. While there he received word of his father's death. He then returned home and shortly after joined his brother, Frank, in Buffalo, in the business of manufacturing fish kits. The plant housing the business was burned and they lost all they had invested. Edmund and Frank then started the manufacture of oil cans in a small way, to which was later added the manufacture of glass. About 1883 Lucius, William and George joined them.
When natural gas was discovered in Indiana in 1887, a glass factor was located in Muncie by the Ball brothers, and in 1900 the sheet metal works was moved from Buffalo to Muncie. The Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, later changed to Ball Brothers Company, was then organized. F.C. Ball was elected president; E.B. Ball, vice-president and general manager; W.C. Ball, secretary; G.A. Ball, treasurer, and L.L. Ball, who had become a practicing physician, a director. The business has grown from a yearly production of 35,000 gross of fruit jars to over one million gross, and from an annual business of $300,000 to $10,000,000. The Ball Brothers Company has become the largest manufacturer of fruit jars in the world. They have added a paper mill, a corrugated paper box plant and a zinc rolling mill in Muncie, a paper mill at Noblesville and another glass factory at Wichita Falls, Texas.
On October 7, 1903, Mr. Ball was united in marriage to Bertha Crosley, daughter of the Rev. Marion Crosley of Indianapolis. Mr. Ball was a member of the Universalist Church. He was president of the board of park trustees; a member of the city planning commission; a trustee of Hillsdale College at Hillsdale, Mich.; the Muncie Home Hospital and the Indiana Boys' School, at Plainfield; president of the Union Traction Company of Indiana, the Indianapolis, Newcastle and Eastern Traction Company, the Warner Gear Company, the Durham Manufacturing Company, the Merchants National Bank, the Merchants Trust Company and many other institutions.
**The above information was provided by Findagrave contributor Mary Lanning**
Yesterday afternoon Muncie lost her foremost citizen when Edmund Burke Ball died. Death came at the family home in Minnetrista boulevard shortly after 4 o'clock. Attending physicians gave heart trouble and chronic nephritis, aggravated by a stroke of paralysis suffered three months ago, as the cause of the death. Mr. Ball was stricken with paralysis while attending a luncheon meeting of the Rotary club on December 2 and his condition had been serious since that date, although for a time he appeared to be on the road to recovery and was able to leave his bed. For several days, however, his condition had been critical and his son, who is a student in Princeton University, and other relatives were summoned. At 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon it was known that death was near, and relatives were at the bedside when the end came.
Funeral services will be conducted from the First Presbyterian Church at 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, with the Rev. A.W. McDavitt of St. Johns Universalist Church, in charge. Services at the church will be conducted by the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, Valley of Indianapolis. The Knights Templar burial service will be conducted at the graveside in Beech Grove Cemetery. Mr. Ball was a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason, the highest rank in Masonry.
The immediate survivors are the wife, Mrs. Bertha Crosley Ball; one son, Edmund Ferdinand Ball; two daughters, Adelia and Janice Ball; three brothers, Frank C. Ball, George A. Ball and Dr. Lucius L. Ball, and one sister, Mrs. Frances Ball Mauck, of Hillsdale, Mich. Another brother, William C. Ball, died a few years ago. Besides the members of his family, Mr. Ball is survived by thousands of grieving friends--the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the prominent and the obscure. Muncie has never before lost a citizen who claimed so many friends from such wide fields. They were the men with whom he labored in his factory, the boys to whom he gave health and happiness, and lessons in citizenship at Camp Crosley; the business man with whom he dealt in his many and large business undertakings; his associates in civic enterprises; his friends in his clubs and lodges, and far from least, the hundreds of persons who benefited by his generous, but unadvertised, philanthropies.
Mr. Ball was vice-president and general manager of the Ball Brothers Company, which he helped to found and helped to develop into the largest industry of its kind in the world. Through his business genius and financial capacity, he became interested financially and officially, with numerous large industrial, commercial and utilities companies throughout the country. In most of these interests he was associated with his brothers. However, it was not for his business prominence, or his benefactions amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but E.B. Ball was best known and loved by his fellow citizens. Despite his innumerable personal duties, he gave bounteously of his time and energy to Muncie. Among his civic hobbies were the aiding of young people and the physical beautification, improvement of the city, and the Indiana State Normal School. The first hobby he satisfied largely through the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. and Camp Crosley, the Y.M.C.A. for boys at Lake Tippecanoe established by Mr. and Mrs. Ball in memory of their son, Clinton Crosley Ball, who died in 1912. The other hobby--beautification of his home city--Mr. Ball satisfied by years of work as a member of the city park board and of the city planning commission. Personally he directed much of the work done under these two units of the city government, and often when the city's financial inability threatened the progress of some effort, Mr. Ball personally overcame the obstacle.
The Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division, was the gift of Mr. Ball and his brothers to Indiana, and his enthusiasm and interest grew with and were largely responsible for the steady, healthy growth of the school. The educational system of this state, if not of the middle West, is thus a debtor to Mr. Ball. Although thousands of persons were, because of his many benefactions, indebted to Mr. Ball at least indirectly, no sense of this indebtedness was ever gained from him. The modesty and whole-heartedness of his acts made it a pleasure to be helped by him, even as it gave him pleasure to help. During the last two years of his life, Mr. Ball devoted all the time he could possibly spare from his business, often sacrificing some business engagement, to the building of the Ball gymnasium a the State Normal and the new Masonic Temple and the city's park system. After the Ball brothers made their gift for the Normal gymnasium, Mr. Ball took active charge of the construction work and never was there a day in which he was in Muncie that he did not spend part of the day at the Normal. He even helped to mix some of the concrete that went into the building. He saw the structure completed but his illness would not permit his attending the dedication. A similar interest was taken by Mr. Ball in the construction of the new Masonic Temple, which is now nearing completion. As a member of the committee in charge of the erection of this building, Mr. Ball put forth every effort to see that the Muncie Temple ranked with the best in the country and he was taking great interest in the progress of the work.
Much of the development of the city's park system is due to the personal effort put forth by Mr. Ball as a member of the board. He had great plans in the making for a more beautiful park system, which was to include a river boulevard running from the East Jackson street bridge to the Tillotson avenue bridge. As a park trustee and a member of the city planning commission, he took this matter in charge and personally secured the right-of-way for the project. His plans were approved by the plan commission and the board of works and the latter body now has the project well in hand with the prospect of an early start in the actual work. But this service to his community was in the every-day life of Mr. Ball and many are the instances now recalled of some kindly act by him. He reached out in all directions, and generally unexpectedly. On the route between Mr. Ball's home and the Ball factories there stands a small church. Mr. Ball passed it daily, and once noticed that the roof was in very poor shape. Arriving at his office he called the pastor of the church and informed him that a new roof was to be placed on the church. The next day the supplies arrived and carpenters set about to repair the building. Outside of the pastor, no member of the church knew how the new roof was secured. A few years ago while driving to the city, Mr. Ball noticed one of his employees having considerable trouble in taking sand from the river bottom with a scoop and team of horses. Mr. Ball stopped his car, waded into the river and helped the man solve his problem. Returning to the river bank he squeezed the water out of his trousers, jumped into his car and went on to his office. Such was the life of Mr. Ball--always ready and willing to give service where needed.
Mr. Ball was the son of Lucius Styles Ball and Maria P. Bingham Ball, and was born in Greensburg, Trumbull County, Ohio on October 21, 1855. Other children in the family were five sons, Lucius Lorenzo, William Charles, Edmund Burke, Frank Clayton, George Alexander and Clinton Harvey, and two daughters, Luciana (Lucina) A. and Frances May. Clinton Harvey Ball died at 2 years of age. Luciana (Lucina) A. Ball, eldest of the family, was an educator of remarkable ability. She assisted George W. Childs, editor and owner of the Philadelphia Ledger, in founding the Drexel Institute and was its financial secretary for a number of years. She died January 14, 1901. Edmund B. Ball's paternal ancestor was Edward Ball, who probably came from England in 1640, and located first at Brantford, Conn., and later settled in New Jersey. He was one of the founders of Newark, N.J. When Edmund Ball was 7 years old, his father and mother, with their seven children, moved to a farm on Grand Island; a large island in Niagara River. There were no railroads and so the family traveled by wagons. The farm was located at the foot of the island where the two forks of the river come together, four miles above the rapids. Here Edmund and his brothers learned to swim and handle a boat with great skill in the swift current. Two years later the family moved to Tonawanda, N.Y. After two years there the family moved to Canandaigua, N.Y., where the father engaged in the mercantile business, and the children attended the public schools in Canandaigua Academy. One summer Edmund worked as a farm hand and learned to do all the farm work from plowing and preparing the soil to harvesting and thrashing the grain. In the winter of 1878 he went into the pine woods of Michigan and cut timber. While there he received word of his father's death. He then returned home and shortly after joined his brother, Frank, in Buffalo, in the business of manufacturing fish kits. The plant housing the business was burned and they lost all they had invested. Edmund and Frank then started the manufacture of oil cans in a small way, to which was later added the manufacture of glass. About 1883 Lucius, William and George joined them.
When natural gas was discovered in Indiana in 1887, a glass factor was located in Muncie by the Ball brothers, and in 1900 the sheet metal works was moved from Buffalo to Muncie. The Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, later changed to Ball Brothers Company, was then organized. F.C. Ball was elected president; E.B. Ball, vice-president and general manager; W.C. Ball, secretary; G.A. Ball, treasurer, and L.L. Ball, who had become a practicing physician, a director. The business has grown from a yearly production of 35,000 gross of fruit jars to over one million gross, and from an annual business of $300,000 to $10,000,000. The Ball Brothers Company has become the largest manufacturer of fruit jars in the world. They have added a paper mill, a corrugated paper box plant and a zinc rolling mill in Muncie, a paper mill at Noblesville and another glass factory at Wichita Falls, Texas.
On October 7, 1903, Mr. Ball was united in marriage to Bertha Crosley, daughter of the Rev. Marion Crosley of Indianapolis. Mr. Ball was a member of the Universalist Church. He was president of the board of park trustees; a member of the city planning commission; a trustee of Hillsdale College at Hillsdale, Mich.; the Muncie Home Hospital and the Indiana Boys' School, at Plainfield; president of the Union Traction Company of Indiana, the Indianapolis, Newcastle and Eastern Traction Company, the Warner Gear Company, the Durham Manufacturing Company, the Merchants National Bank, the Merchants Trust Company and many other institutions.
**The above information was provided by Findagrave contributor Mary Lanning**
MUNCIE MORNING STAR, Monday, March 9, 1925
Yesterday afternoon Muncie lost her foremost citizen when Edmund Burke Ball died. Death came at the family home in Minnetrista boulevard shortly after 4 o'clock. Attending physicians gave heart trouble and chronic nephritis, aggravated by a stroke of paralysis suffered three months ago, as the cause of the death. Mr. Ball was stricken with paralysis while attending a luncheon meeting of the Rotary club on December 2 and his condition had been serious since that date, although for a time he appeared to be on the road to recovery and was able to leave his bed. For several days, however, his condition had been critical and his son, who is a student in Princeton University, and other relatives were summoned. At 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon it was known that death was near, and relatives were at the bedside when the end came.
Funeral services will be conducted from the First Presbyterian Church at 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, with the Rev. A.W. McDavitt of St. Johns Universalist Church, in charge. Services at the church will be conducted by the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, Valley of Indianapolis. The Knights Templar burial service will be conducted at the graveside in Beech Grove Cemetery. Mr. Ball was a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason, the highest rank in Masonry.
The immediate survivors are the wife, Mrs. Bertha Crosley Ball; one son, Edmund Ferdinand Ball; two daughters, Adelia and Janice Ball; three brothers, Frank C. Ball, George A. Ball and Dr. Lucius L. Ball, and one sister, Mrs. Frances Ball Mauck, of Hillsdale, Mich. Another brother, William C. Ball, died a few years ago. Besides the members of his family, Mr. Ball is survived by thousands of grieving friends--the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the prominent and the obscure. Muncie has never before lost a citizen who claimed so many friends from such wide fields. They were the men with whom he labored in his factory, the boys to whom he gave health and happiness, and lessons in citizenship at Camp Crosley; the business man with whom he dealt in his many and large business undertakings; his associates in civic enterprises; his friends in his clubs and lodges, and far from least, the hundreds of persons who benefited by his generous, but unadvertised, philanthropies.
Mr. Ball was vice-president and general manager of the Ball Brothers Company, which he helped to found and helped to develop into the largest industry of its kind in the world. Through his business genius and financial capacity, he became interested financially and officially, with numerous large industrial, commercial and utilities companies throughout the country. In most of these interests he was associated with his brothers. However, it was not for his business prominence, or his benefactions amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but E.B. Ball was best known and loved by his fellow citizens. Despite his innumerable personal duties, he gave bounteously of his time and energy to Muncie. Among his civic hobbies were the aiding of young people and the physical beautification, improvement of the city, and the Indiana State Normal School. The first hobby he satisfied largely through the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. and Camp Crosley, the Y.M.C.A. for boys at Lake Tippecanoe established by Mr. and Mrs. Ball in memory of their son, Clinton Crosley Ball, who died in 1912. The other hobby--beautification of his home city--Mr. Ball satisfied by years of work as a member of the city park board and of the city planning commission. Personally he directed much of the work done under these two units of the city government, and often when the city's financial inability threatened the progress of some effort, Mr. Ball personally overcame the obstacle.
The Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division, was the gift of Mr. Ball and his brothers to Indiana, and his enthusiasm and interest grew with and were largely responsible for the steady, healthy growth of the school. The educational system of this state, if not of the middle West, is thus a debtor to Mr. Ball. Although thousands of persons were, because of his many benefactions, indebted to Mr. Ball at least indirectly, no sense of this indebtedness was ever gained from him. The modesty and whole-heartedness of his acts made it a pleasure to be helped by him, even as it gave him pleasure to help. During the last two years of his life, Mr. Ball devoted all the time he could possibly spare from his business, often sacrificing some business engagement, to the building of the Ball gymnasium a the State Normal and the new Masonic Temple and the city's park system. After the Ball brothers made their gift for the Normal gymnasium, Mr. Ball took active charge of the construction work and never was there a day in which he was in Muncie that he did not spend part of the day at the Normal. He even helped to mix some of the concrete that went into the building. He saw the structure completed but his illness would not permit his attending the dedication. A similar interest was taken by Mr. Ball in the construction of the new Masonic Temple, which is now nearing completion. As a member of the committee in charge of the erection of this building, Mr. Ball put forth every effort to see that the Muncie Temple ranked with the best in the country and he was taking great interest in the progress of the work.
Much of the development of the city's park system is due to the personal effort put forth by Mr. Ball as a member of the board. He had great plans in the making for a more beautiful park system, which was to include a river boulevard running from the East Jackson street bridge to the Tillotson avenue bridge. As a park trustee and a member of the city planning commission, he took this matter in charge and personally secured the right-of-way for the project. His plans were approved by the plan commission and the board of works and the latter body now has the project well in hand with the prospect of an early start in the actual work. But this service to his community was in the every-day life of Mr. Ball and many are the instances now recalled of some kindly act by him. He reached out in all directions, and generally unexpectedly. On the route between Mr. Ball's home and the Ball factories there stands a small church. Mr. Ball passed it daily, and once noticed that the roof was in very poor shape. Arriving at his office he called the pastor of the church and informed him that a new roof was to be placed on the church. The next day the supplies arrived and carpenters set about to repair the building. Outside of the pastor, no member of the church knew how the new roof was secured. A few years ago while driving to the city, Mr. Ball noticed one of his employees having considerable trouble in taking sand from the river bottom with a scoop and team of horses. Mr. Ball stopped his car, waded into the river and helped the man solve his problem. Returning to the river bank he squeezed the water out of his trousers, jumped into his car and went on to his office. Such was the life of Mr. Ball--always ready and willing to give service where needed.
Mr. Ball was the son of Lucius Styles Ball and Maria P. Bingham Ball, and was born in Greensburg, Trumbull County, Ohio on October 21, 1855. Other children in the family were five sons, Lucius Lorenzo, William Charles, Edmund Burke, Frank Clayton, George Alexander and Clinton Harvey, and two daughters, Luciana (Lucina) A. and Frances May. Clinton Harvey Ball died at 2 years of age. Luciana (Lucina) A. Ball, eldest of the family, was an educator of remarkable ability. She assisted George W. Childs, editor and owner of the Philadelphia Ledger, in founding the Drexel Institute and was its financial secretary for a number of years. She died January 14, 1901. Edmund B. Ball's paternal ancestor was Edward Ball, who probably came from England in 1640, and located first at Brantford, Conn., and later settled in New Jersey. He was one of the founders of Newark, N.J. When Edmund Ball was 7 years old, his father and mother, with their seven children, moved to a farm on Grand Island; a large island in Niagara River. There were no railroads and so the family traveled by wagons. The farm was located at the foot of the island where the two forks of the river come together, four miles above the rapids. Here Edmund and his brothers learned to swim and handle a boat with great skill in the swift current. Two years later the family moved to Tonawanda, N.Y. After two years there the family moved to Canandaigua, N.Y., where the father engaged in the mercantile business, and the children attended the public schools in Canandaigua Academy. One summer Edmund worked as a farm hand and learned to do all the farm work from plowing and preparing the soil to harvesting and thrashing the grain. In the winter of 1878 he went into the pine woods of Michigan and cut timber. While there he received word of his father's death. He then returned home and shortly after joined his brother, Frank, in Buffalo, in the business of manufacturing fish kits. The plant housing the business was burned and they lost all they had invested. Edmund and Frank then started the manufacture of oil cans in a small way, to which was later added the manufacture of glass. About 1883 Lucius, William and George joined them.
When natural gas was discovered in Indiana in 1887, a glass factor was located in Muncie by the Ball brothers, and in 1900 the sheet metal works was moved from Buffalo to Muncie. The Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, later changed to Ball Brothers Company, was then organized. F.C. Ball was elected president; E.B. Ball, vice-president and general manager; W.C. Ball, secretary; G.A. Ball, treasurer, and L.L. Ball, who had become a practicing physician, a director. The business has grown from a yearly production of 35,000 gross of fruit jars to over one million gross, and from an annual business of $300,000 to $10,000,000. The Ball Brothers Company has become the largest manufacturer of fruit jars in the world. They have added a paper mill, a corrugated paper box plant and a zinc rolling mill in Muncie, a paper mill at Noblesville and another glass factory at Wichita Falls, Texas.
On October 7, 1903, Mr. Ball was united in marriage to Bertha Crosley, daughter of the Rev. Marion Crosley of Indianapolis. Mr. Ball was a member of the Universalist Church. He was president of the board of park trustees; a member of the city planning commission; a trustee of Hillsdale College at Hillsdale, Mich.; the Muncie Home Hospital and the Indiana Boys' School, at Plainfield; president of the Union Traction Company of Indiana, the Indianapolis, Newcastle and Eastern Traction Company, the Warner Gear Company, the Durham Manufacturing Company, the Merchants National Bank, the Merchants Trust Company and many other institutions.
**The above information was provided by Findagrave contributor Mary Lanning**
Yesterday afternoon Muncie lost her foremost citizen when Edmund Burke Ball died. Death came at the family home in Minnetrista boulevard shortly after 4 o'clock. Attending physicians gave heart trouble and chronic nephritis, aggravated by a stroke of paralysis suffered three months ago, as the cause of the death. Mr. Ball was stricken with paralysis while attending a luncheon meeting of the Rotary club on December 2 and his condition had been serious since that date, although for a time he appeared to be on the road to recovery and was able to leave his bed. For several days, however, his condition had been critical and his son, who is a student in Princeton University, and other relatives were summoned. At 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon it was known that death was near, and relatives were at the bedside when the end came.
Funeral services will be conducted from the First Presbyterian Church at 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, with the Rev. A.W. McDavitt of St. Johns Universalist Church, in charge. Services at the church will be conducted by the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, Valley of Indianapolis. The Knights Templar burial service will be conducted at the graveside in Beech Grove Cemetery. Mr. Ball was a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason, the highest rank in Masonry.
The immediate survivors are the wife, Mrs. Bertha Crosley Ball; one son, Edmund Ferdinand Ball; two daughters, Adelia and Janice Ball; three brothers, Frank C. Ball, George A. Ball and Dr. Lucius L. Ball, and one sister, Mrs. Frances Ball Mauck, of Hillsdale, Mich. Another brother, William C. Ball, died a few years ago. Besides the members of his family, Mr. Ball is survived by thousands of grieving friends--the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the prominent and the obscure. Muncie has never before lost a citizen who claimed so many friends from such wide fields. They were the men with whom he labored in his factory, the boys to whom he gave health and happiness, and lessons in citizenship at Camp Crosley; the business man with whom he dealt in his many and large business undertakings; his associates in civic enterprises; his friends in his clubs and lodges, and far from least, the hundreds of persons who benefited by his generous, but unadvertised, philanthropies.
Mr. Ball was vice-president and general manager of the Ball Brothers Company, which he helped to found and helped to develop into the largest industry of its kind in the world. Through his business genius and financial capacity, he became interested financially and officially, with numerous large industrial, commercial and utilities companies throughout the country. In most of these interests he was associated with his brothers. However, it was not for his business prominence, or his benefactions amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but E.B. Ball was best known and loved by his fellow citizens. Despite his innumerable personal duties, he gave bounteously of his time and energy to Muncie. Among his civic hobbies were the aiding of young people and the physical beautification, improvement of the city, and the Indiana State Normal School. The first hobby he satisfied largely through the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. and Camp Crosley, the Y.M.C.A. for boys at Lake Tippecanoe established by Mr. and Mrs. Ball in memory of their son, Clinton Crosley Ball, who died in 1912. The other hobby--beautification of his home city--Mr. Ball satisfied by years of work as a member of the city park board and of the city planning commission. Personally he directed much of the work done under these two units of the city government, and often when the city's financial inability threatened the progress of some effort, Mr. Ball personally overcame the obstacle.
The Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division, was the gift of Mr. Ball and his brothers to Indiana, and his enthusiasm and interest grew with and were largely responsible for the steady, healthy growth of the school. The educational system of this state, if not of the middle West, is thus a debtor to Mr. Ball. Although thousands of persons were, because of his many benefactions, indebted to Mr. Ball at least indirectly, no sense of this indebtedness was ever gained from him. The modesty and whole-heartedness of his acts made it a pleasure to be helped by him, even as it gave him pleasure to help. During the last two years of his life, Mr. Ball devoted all the time he could possibly spare from his business, often sacrificing some business engagement, to the building of the Ball gymnasium a the State Normal and the new Masonic Temple and the city's park system. After the Ball brothers made their gift for the Normal gymnasium, Mr. Ball took active charge of the construction work and never was there a day in which he was in Muncie that he did not spend part of the day at the Normal. He even helped to mix some of the concrete that went into the building. He saw the structure completed but his illness would not permit his attending the dedication. A similar interest was taken by Mr. Ball in the construction of the new Masonic Temple, which is now nearing completion. As a member of the committee in charge of the erection of this building, Mr. Ball put forth every effort to see that the Muncie Temple ranked with the best in the country and he was taking great interest in the progress of the work.
Much of the development of the city's park system is due to the personal effort put forth by Mr. Ball as a member of the board. He had great plans in the making for a more beautiful park system, which was to include a river boulevard running from the East Jackson street bridge to the Tillotson avenue bridge. As a park trustee and a member of the city planning commission, he took this matter in charge and personally secured the right-of-way for the project. His plans were approved by the plan commission and the board of works and the latter body now has the project well in hand with the prospect of an early start in the actual work. But this service to his community was in the every-day life of Mr. Ball and many are the instances now recalled of some kindly act by him. He reached out in all directions, and generally unexpectedly. On the route between Mr. Ball's home and the Ball factories there stands a small church. Mr. Ball passed it daily, and once noticed that the roof was in very poor shape. Arriving at his office he called the pastor of the church and informed him that a new roof was to be placed on the church. The next day the supplies arrived and carpenters set about to repair the building. Outside of the pastor, no member of the church knew how the new roof was secured. A few years ago while driving to the city, Mr. Ball noticed one of his employees having considerable trouble in taking sand from the river bottom with a scoop and team of horses. Mr. Ball stopped his car, waded into the river and helped the man solve his problem. Returning to the river bank he squeezed the water out of his trousers, jumped into his car and went on to his office. Such was the life of Mr. Ball--always ready and willing to give service where needed.
Mr. Ball was the son of Lucius Styles Ball and Maria P. Bingham Ball, and was born in Greensburg, Trumbull County, Ohio on October 21, 1855. Other children in the family were five sons, Lucius Lorenzo, William Charles, Edmund Burke, Frank Clayton, George Alexander and Clinton Harvey, and two daughters, Luciana (Lucina) A. and Frances May. Clinton Harvey Ball died at 2 years of age. Luciana (Lucina) A. Ball, eldest of the family, was an educator of remarkable ability. She assisted George W. Childs, editor and owner of the Philadelphia Ledger, in founding the Drexel Institute and was its financial secretary for a number of years. She died January 14, 1901. Edmund B. Ball's paternal ancestor was Edward Ball, who probably came from England in 1640, and located first at Brantford, Conn., and later settled in New Jersey. He was one of the founders of Newark, N.J. When Edmund Ball was 7 years old, his father and mother, with their seven children, moved to a farm on Grand Island; a large island in Niagara River. There were no railroads and so the family traveled by wagons. The farm was located at the foot of the island where the two forks of the river come together, four miles above the rapids. Here Edmund and his brothers learned to swim and handle a boat with great skill in the swift current. Two years later the family moved to Tonawanda, N.Y. After two years there the family moved to Canandaigua, N.Y., where the father engaged in the mercantile business, and the children attended the public schools in Canandaigua Academy. One summer Edmund worked as a farm hand and learned to do all the farm work from plowing and preparing the soil to harvesting and thrashing the grain. In the winter of 1878 he went into the pine woods of Michigan and cut timber. While there he received word of his father's death. He then returned home and shortly after joined his brother, Frank, in Buffalo, in the business of manufacturing fish kits. The plant housing the business was burned and they lost all they had invested. Edmund and Frank then started the manufacture of oil cans in a small way, to which was later added the manufacture of glass. About 1883 Lucius, William and George joined them.
When natural gas was discovered in Indiana in 1887, a glass factor was located in Muncie by the Ball brothers, and in 1900 the sheet metal works was moved from Buffalo to Muncie. The Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, later changed to Ball Brothers Company, was then organized. F.C. Ball was elected president; E.B. Ball, vice-president and general manager; W.C. Ball, secretary; G.A. Ball, treasurer, and L.L. Ball, who had become a practicing physician, a director. The business has grown from a yearly production of 35,000 gross of fruit jars to over one million gross, and from an annual business of $300,000 to $10,000,000. The Ball Brothers Company has become the largest manufacturer of fruit jars in the world. They have added a paper mill, a corrugated paper box plant and a zinc rolling mill in Muncie, a paper mill at Noblesville and another glass factory at Wichita Falls, Texas.
On October 7, 1903, Mr. Ball was united in marriage to Bertha Crosley, daughter of the Rev. Marion Crosley of Indianapolis. Mr. Ball was a member of the Universalist Church. He was president of the board of park trustees; a member of the city planning commission; a trustee of Hillsdale College at Hillsdale, Mich.; the Muncie Home Hospital and the Indiana Boys' School, at Plainfield; president of the Union Traction Company of Indiana, the Indianapolis, Newcastle and Eastern Traction Company, the Warner Gear Company, the Durham Manufacturing Company, the Merchants National Bank, the Merchants Trust Company and many other institutions.
**The above information was provided by Findagrave contributor Mary Lanning**
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