The Ball Brothers Pillars

These pillars mark the legacy of the Ball brothers, the family whose canning jars made Muncie famous.

Five brothers, Edmund, Frank, George, William, and Lucius, incorporated their glass company in eighteen eighty-six. The next year they moved it from Buffalo, New York, to Muncie, lured by a promise of free natural gas, land, and money during Indiana's gas boom. First glassware came off the line in eighteen eighty-eight, and by nineteen hundred the brothers led the nation in fruit jar production. At its peak their Muncie plant sprawled across sixty-three acres.

The Ball name reaches far beyond the kitchen. In nineteen eighteen the brothers gave land and buildings to the state for a teachers college, which later took the family name and eventually became Ball State University. From mason jars to a major university, this family reshaped a whole Indiana city.