William Ballou Collection

Collection

Identifier: SC 46

Staff Only

Scope and Content

Business receipts, "Letter to Bill" pamphlet which mentions the strike of Local 137, a letter, funeral card, and clippings about Ballou and his home, and obituary.

Dates

1902, 1941, 1954.

Creator

Ballou, William, 1864-1941. (Person)

Access

The collection is open under the rules and regulations of the NDSU Archives.

Copyrights

The NDSU Archives does not hold the copyrights to the collection.

Biography

William Martin Ballou was born to Universalist Minister. Levi Ballou and his wife, Elvira (Goodell) Ballou on the 26th September 1864 in North Orange, Mass. His father died a year after his birth. From 1879-1880 he studied Latin in Boston. From 1880 to 1883 he attended Tufts College, in Medford, Mass. He came to Devils Lake, Dakota Territory in July, 1883. We filed a claim in Cato township, in Ramsey County. After four years returned to his education, first at the University of Michigan, and then the University of Minnesota. He returned to North Dakota in 1889 and became a minister with the First Unitarian society in Fargo. He held this position until 1897, when he resigned and entered Harvard for special study. He served as a minister at the Unity church in Amherst, Mass., and traveled to southern Europe. He returned to Fargo in 1900, and engaged in a china and crockery business. Around 1915, he spent a year in Spokane, Wash. and there met Olivia Dahl. They were married in Chicago, Ill. She was a concert singer and voice teacher, and Mr. Ballou wrote as a music critic for the Fargo Forum newspaper. Mrs. Ballou died in 1930, and William Ballou died on May 14, 1941, in Fargo.