Ballard, Rice C. (Rice Carter), -1860

Rice Carter Ballard (c. 1800-1860) was a slave trader based in Richmond, Va., who worked in partnership with the large slave trading firm of Isaac Franklin and John Armfield in the late 1820s and early 1830s. By the early 1840s, Ballard had settled down as a planter with several plantations in the Mississippi Valley. He married Louise Berthe around 1840 and made his home in Louisville, Ky. Ballard and his wife had three children: Ella (b. 1841), and twins Ann Carter and Charlotte Berthe (b. 1847).

Rice Carter Ballard was probably born around 1800 in Virginia. By the late 1820s, he was involved in the interstate slave trade, buying slaves in the southeastern states, especially Virginia and North Carolina, and selling them in New Orleans and Natchez. By 1831, Ballard was involved in a slave trading partnership with Isaac Franklin and John Armfield, who ran one of the largest interstate slave trading operations of the nineteenth century. Ballard moved from Virginia to Natchez in the fall of 1836, and by this time had formed a company called Ballard, Franklin, and Co. in Natchez, which was involved in the slave trade. Ballard was also a partner in his brother's general merchandise company, James Ballard and Co.

Ballard seems to have stopped trading in slaves by the late 1830s, but he was involved in many kinds of financial transactions. By the early 1840s, Ballard was beginning to purchase plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas in partnership with Judge Samuel S. Boyd of Natchez. He spent the remainder of his life, until his death in 1860, managing these plantations.

Ballard married Louise Berthe of Louisville, Ky., in the spring of 1840. They had three children: Ella Ballard, born in 1841, and twins Ann Carter Ballard and Charlotte Berthe Ballard, born in the fall of 1847. Although his wife and children lived permanently in Louisville, Ballard spent much of his time at the plantations, especially in Mississippi. Many of Ballard's correspondents addressed him as Colonel Ballard, but it is not clear how he got this rank.