Born into happy, middle class families a decade apart, both Sullivan Ballou and Sarah Shumway
experienced the same childhood trauma - the death of their fathers at a very young age. Even
though both mothers continued to raise their children, they were "orphans" in Victorian
terminology and experienced an uneasy dependency on the tenuous generosity of wealthier
relatives. They brought to their union a determination to provide security for each other
and their children.
Sullivan was born in a rural area north of Providence, originally known as "the outlands of
Providence" and later called the Cumberland. So many Ballou descendants settled in the area
called Smithfield, that it became known as "the Ballou Neighborhood". As towns sprung up
around the industrial mills, they were named decades before they incorporated as municipalities.
Woonsocket was Sullivan's town. To learn more about Woonsocket, we reccomend www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9105/
(Unfortunately, geocities does not allow us to link directly to the site for your convenience.)
Sarah was born some twenty-five miles north in Worchester, Massachusetts, likely in the year of the Great Fire, though her birthdate is given in different records as 1836 or 1838. Her family had founded towns in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, so she did not grow up surrounded by cousins as did Sullivan.
Each had a surviving sibling and each experienced the death of a younger sibling from one of the many deadly childhood illnesses of the period.
