Church of Christ Evanglist. Sketch On The Life Of J.W. Ballard -- J. W. Ballard was truly one of the great pioneer preachers in Oklahoma. He was born at Walton, (Henderson County) Texas on October 24, 1875. Under the preaching of J.A. Hall, who came to Texas from Green County, Ill. in 1845, he obeyed the gospel in 1896 at Cedar Hill, Texas. He joined the great migration that converged on the opening of the Cheyenne-Arapaho country in 1891 and settled at Port, an inland town in the Southwest part of Washita County. His father had taught him to be a blacksmith and he followed that trade at Port. Before moving to Oklahoma he was married to Mary Ellen Ramsey, of Cedar Hill. To them three sons and a daughter were born. They were Jesse C., who has joined his parents in the "better land," Howard P., Georgia Carr and Bennie. Of this marriage he writes: "When I was about nineteen years old I was running around quite a bit. My mother had died when I was fourteen and my father married again, so I was just in and out. One day my father said to me: "Son, I want you to find you a good Christian girl, get married, and stop this running around." He asked me if I knew of a good Christian girl that I could get. I told him I thought I did, and he asked me, "Who is she?" I told him, and he knew her family well and said: "If you can get that girl, you go get married and settle down." My father had always taught me not to go with any girl that was not of good family and highly respected." He always said: "If you cannot go with the best, don't go with any, and above all, marry a Christian girl." (Fathers today might profit by this example. He married Mary Ellen and she walked by his side to the end of life, faithfully carrying more than her part of the load, which is typical of preacher's wives. At Port Brother Ballard cane in contact with a gospel preacher named John D. Kelley. Brother Kelley was about the only gospel preacher in the area, and he preached in all the usual places in that frontier society. He began taking Brother Ballard with him to his preaching appointments, and almost forced him into the pulpit. His formal education had ended at the sixth grade, and he was keenly aware of this deficiency, hence his reluctance to begin such work. However, Brother Kelley could see things Brother Ballard could not see, and so just wouldn't leave him alone. Naturally, Brother Ballard came to love and respect Brother Kelley, and to him he gives much credit for the great work he did as a gospel preacher. Like many other men of his time, he was a serious student of the Bible and was by no means, an uneducated man. One of his sons writes of often seeing him study far into the night. At one period in my life I did a daily radio program for ten years from Lawton, Oklahoma, near Apache where Brother Ballard lived. He was a regular listener, and often dropped me a helpful note. This communication always indicated a thorough knowledge of The Book, sound logical reasoning, and complete dedication to The Truth. He was by no means an uneducated man! Early in life he moved from Port to nearby Sentinel, where I grew up. (But he had moved from Sentinel when we got there.) In Sentinel he preached and operated his blacksmith shop. He was well and favorably remembered by the brethren there, and I remember often hearing older folks tell of going into his shop and find him working on a plow point on one end of his anvil and the Bible propped open on the other end. The partial record of his work his children have shows that he held at least two hundred and twenty eight meetings, and this was in the time when most meetings were at least three Sundays long, and many of them longer. The record shows that he preached in one hundred and forty six communities in twelve states. He was often asked to return where he had held meetings, and held seven meetings in one place. He baptized many people, with as many as sixty five baptisms in one meeting. In addition to his meeting work, he had many debates, and did "local work" at Sentinel, Gould, Cordell, Sulphur, Helena, Wynona, and Apache, all in Oklahoma, and in Shreveport, La. In his day a preacher literally had to "endure hardness" if he would be a "good soldier of Christ Jesus." He tells of many problems that arose in his life because of inadequate support. He never complained about this, however he did feel that the brethren should not put such hardships upon the preacher's family. Of course he was right about this, and due to the sacrifices of such men as he, those of us who have followed have been better supported. He did sometimes wonder if younger preachers would have so suffered. Of course it is now as it was then; some would pay the price and some wouldn't. In 1911 Sister C.R. Nichol wrote of him in her Gospel Preachers Who Blazed The Trail, "He is one of the consecrated faithful preachers of the gospel. To know him is to love him." His son, Howard, recently wrote: "I am proud to be the son of J.W. Ballard." And well he might be: He baptized my own mother into Christ in 1905, the year before I was born, and in our family his name was always an honored one. On May 30, 1959 The Lord called him home. Mary Ellen continued until October 25, 1962. They both "sleep" in the Apache cemetery where so many of their brethren and friends also await the resurrection. "The lives of great men all remind us...." —Gospel Preachers Of Yesteryear, Loyd L. Smith, page 18-20, This Article Originally Appeared In The Christian Worker, May, 1975.