Mary Ann Parsons

Mary Ann Parsons, known as Minnie, was my great great aunt. She married a Methodist minister called George Grey Ballard with whom she had five children. George transferred from the Methodists to the Church of Ireland. In 1877 when Minnie was 34, the family were living in Armagh. Minnie died in childbirth of rupture of the uterus. The child did not survive. George emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he got a position as curate in a parish there. In 1879 he married Caroline Boomer with whom he had a son called Chesmer. The family moved from Toronto to Buffalo, New York where George lived until his death in 1921. Minnie and George’s second daughter, Anna, went on to have a brilliant academic career, eventually becoming an Associate Professor of Modern Languages at Columbia University in New York.