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Ball Families Living in England and Wales in 1891 - Ancestry.com
BALL Name Meaning and History

1. English: nickname for a short, fat person, from Middle English bal(le) ‘ball’ (Old English ball, Old Norse b{o,}llr).
2. English: topographic name for someone who lived on or by a knoll or rounded hill, from the same Middle English word, bal(le), used in this sense.
3. English: from the Old Norse personal name Balle, derived either from ballr ‘dangerous’ or b{o,}llr ‘ball’.
4. South German: from Middle High German bal ‘ball’, possibly applied as a metonymic occupational name for a juggler, or a habitational name from a place so named in the Rhine area.
5. Dutch and German: short form of any of various Germanic personal names formed with the element bald (see Bald).

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

Ball Family Genealogy Forum - hardly one family :-)
also
RootsWeb: Genealogy Mailing Lists: BALL Surname
and
Ball - Family History & Genealogy Message Board - rootsweb.com

the only relevant message for my own research was by me in 2004
BALL Bristol Gloucester Swindon England and Cardiff Neath Wales - Ball - Family History & Genealogy Message Board - rootsweb.com
and my own ancestor
RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: WATKINS LAPHAM updated 2009:
"1 Thomas Buckingham Ball b: BET 1806 AND 1811 d: BEF 1851
+ Elizabeth Keene b: BET 1796 AND 1798 d: AFT 1871"

and my cousins of whom I still have not found any living descendants via Neath or Swindon

  2 William Thomas Stevens Ball b: BET 1831 AND 1832 d: BEF SEP 1901
     + Margaret Smith b: ABT 1836 d: AFT 1901
       3 Elizabeth Fanny (Ely) Ball b: 29 JUN 1857
       3 Frederick William Ball b: ABT AUG 1859 d: BEF 6 MAR 1861
       3 Margaret Jane Ball b: BEF JUN 1860
         + William J. Foyle b: ABT 1861
           4 Fanny E. Foyle b: 1887
       3 Ann Phipps Ball b: MAR 1862 d: JUN 1862
       3 Thomas William Ball b: SEP 1863
       3 Frederick Augustus Ball b: BEF SEP 1871 d: MAR 1890
       3 Minnie Phipps Ball b: BEF SEP 1871
   2 George Augustus Ball b: AUG 1833 d: JUN 1886
     + Sarah - b: ABT 1830 d: DEC 1916
       3 Fanny Bartley Ball b: ABT 1854
         + Aram Llewellyn Williams b: ABT 1853 d: DEC 1915
           4 Anne Williams b: ABT 1883
       3 George Thomas Ball b: JUN 1857
         + Maria Briant Hutchins b: ABT 1855
           4 Percy William Ball b: MAR 1880
       3 Willam Buckingham Ball b: DEC 1861 d: JUN 1863
       3 Edward Keene Ball b: MAR 1864 d: JUN 1922
       3 Anne Phipps Ball b: BEF MAR 1868
         + John Wynne Jones b: ABT 1868
           4 Edward W Jones b: ABT 1894