Edward Ball was born around 1825. By the early 1860s, he was living in Georgia. He supported the Confederacy, and he received a commission as lieutenant colonel of the 51^st Georgia Infantry on March 22, 1862. The regiment took part in the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Gettysburg, the Battle of the Wilderness, and the Overland Campaign. He was promoted to colonel on May 2, 1863. In 1862, officials in Randolph County, Georgia, apparently informed him that the county would not provide food or financial support for the soldiers' families "unless they would send hom their bounty money." Ball fiercely protested, writing, "let not those we love so dear suffer in our absence, for it is the reflection of them that renders our Country worth fighting for and nerves our arm when in the face of the foe; tis for them we would gladly live, and willingly die." He was wounded in the shoulder on October 19, 1864, in the Battle of Cedar Creek, and he died in a hospital in Staunton, Virginia, on November 13, 1864.

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