an African-American slave from Maryland, best known for his account as a fugitive slave, The Life and Adventures of Charles Ball (1837). Charles Ball lived in Calvert county, Maryland, until about age four. After his mother died in the 1780s, Charles and his other three siblings were all sold to separate purchasers. Ball's history/memoir is a fascinating realistic account of the life of slaves and slave-owners in the early 19th century, which he describes as "one long waste, barren desert, of cheerless, hopeless, lifeless slavery; to be varied only by the pangs of hunger, and the stings of the lash" .
