Ballard House - Another one falls to the wrecking ball

Unfortunately we've lost another piece of history forever. The Ballard house was at one time a grand southern plantation. It was what started me on my journey of actively searching out old houses to restore. I found it by accident years ago when I was in a gas station getting gas.


I've always admired old homes, but seeing this one and walking through it and feeling it's history emminating from the walls gave me the restoration bug bad. I contacted the real estate agent for the property and asked him about the house. The owner had started restoring it a few years before but had given up because he had already put a lot of money into it and the area was turning commercial. The agent spoke with the owner about my desire to have the house, he said I could have it for $12,000. He also said that he had a lot of extra things like doors, windows, and trim in storage that I could have. I was really excited and began looking for land to move it to and someone to move it.

I also began researching the history of the house. It was built in 1869 by Levi Ballard. He was a Sargent in the Confederate Army. The story goes that before the war he was just a poor average farmer but that he came back from the war with lots of money. He built this plantation and hired sharecroppers to work it. He also started the first bank in town and was a Grand Master of the Free Masons.

In the end I was not able to purchase the house. It still remained in the back of my mind though. Just recently I started thinking about it alot. I figured that maybe now I would be able to find some land for it, move it there and let it sit for a while until I was able to restore it. I finally decided to drive by it yesterday and found nothing but an empty field. The attendant in the gas station said that it was just torn down recently and a shopping center was going to be built there. I am absolutely crushed by this. The house was on the National Register of Historic Places. This was a huge piece of history that is now gone forever, like so many others...

Here are some pictures of the place, these are now all that is left.

Left Side

Right Side

Front

Back

Ariel View taken before the kitchen collapsed

The kitchen fell in years before I ever found the place. When the sewer line in the foreground of the above picture was put in, the remains of it were pushed back into a pile and are still there now. Not sure why they were not taken when the house was torn down but there is still a lot of good wood in the pile.

Parlor

Dining Room?

Central Hall

Upstairs Front Porch

Front Entrance

Barn

Smokehouse

The barn burned down last year, it was set by a homeless person living in it.

The First Baptist Church across the street where the Ballard family is buried

Levi Ballards grave