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Early life

Lucille Désirée Ball was born on Sunday, August 6, 1911, at 69 Stewart Avenue in Jamestown, New York, the first child and only daughter of Henry Durrell "Had" Ball, a lineman for Bell Telephone, and Désirée Evelyn "DeDe" (née Hunt) Ball. Her family belonged to the Baptist church. Her ancestors were mostly English, but a few were Scottish, French, and Irish. Some were among the earliest settlers in the Thirteen Colonies, including Elder John Crandall of Westerly, Rhode Island, and Edmund Rice, an early emigrant from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Her father's Bell Telephone career frequently required the family to move during Lucy's early childhood. The first was to Anaconda, Montana, and later to Trenton, New Jersey. On February 28, 1915, while living in Wyandotte, Michigan, Lucy's father died of typhoid fever at age 27 when Lucy was only three. At that time, DeDe was pregnant with her second child, Fred Ball (1915–2007). Lucille recalled little from the day her father died, except a bird getting trapped in the house, which caused her lifelong ornithophobia.

Ball's mother returned to New York, where maternal grandparents helped raise Lucy and her brother Fred in Celoron, a summer resort village on Chautauqua Lake. Their home was at 59 West 8th Street (later renamed to 59 Lucy Lane). Also living in the house were Ball's aunt and uncle, Lola and George Mandicos, and their daughter, Lucy's first cousin Cleo. Having grown up with Lucy, Cleo would later work as a producer on several of Lucy's radio and television programs, and Lucy also introduced Cleo to her second husband, the Los Angeles Times critic Cecil Smith.

Ball loved Celoron Park, a popular amusement area at the time. Its boardwalk had a ramp to the lake that served as a children's slide, the Pier Ballroom, a roller-coaster, a bandstand, and a stage where vaudeville concerts and plays were presented.

Four years after Henry Ball's death, DeDe married Edward Peterson. While they looked for work in another city, Peterson's parents cared for Lucy and Fred. Ball's step-grandparents were a puritanical Swedish couple who banished all mirrors from the house except one over the bathroom sink. When Lucy was caught admiring herself in it, she was severely chastised for being vain. She later said that this period of time affected her deeply, and it lasted seven or eight years.

When Lucy was 12, her stepfather encouraged her to audition for his Shriners organization that needed entertainers for the chorus line of its next show. While Ball was onstage, she realized performing was a great way to gain praise. In 1927, her family was forced to move to a small apartment in Jamestown after their house and furnishings were sold to settle a legal judgment.