Ballston

Variant name of place

Balls Town; Ballstown; Ball Town

Geographic position

42.9533° N, 73.8747° W

Sources

http://history.rays-place.com/ny/ballston-ny.htm; http://dmna.ny.gov/forts/fortsA_D/ballsTownFort.htm; Stone, William Leete. Reminiscences of Saratoga and Ballston. New York: Virtue and Yorston, 1875. Geo coordinates at https://www.google.com/#q=geographic+coordinates+of+ballston+ny.

General note

Ballston is a town in central New York state, north of Albany. The area was occupied by Mohawk Indians, who resented the appropriation of their sacred grounds by European settlers. The first settlers, the MacDonald brothers, built a homestead on the west bank of Ballston Lake in 1763. Reverend Eliphalet Ball arrived in 1770 with his three sons and members of his congregation from Bedford, NY, bought the land from the MacDonalds, named it Ball's Town, and established a Presbyterian church there in 1771. Soon, settlers arrived from other parts of New England, New Jersey, Scotland and north of Ireland. In 1774, a stockaded fort was built in Ballston, which was attacked by the British and their Indian allies from Canada in 1780 and 1781. It became a town of Albany county in 1785 and was part of the religious circuit in upstate New York in which Occom travelled.