Tabitha Field, Taffy for short, was baptized 16 March 1933 at Pelham Manor New York, by Rev. Dr. Soper, the same minister who married her parents. She attended public school in Coronado, California; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Pelham Manor, New York; and Annapolis, Maryland. She also boarded, at Emma Williard, School, Troy New York, and Holton Arms School in Washington, D. C., where she graduated in 1950. She,entered Hood College, Frederick, Maryland that fall, but was forcod to give up her college education in January 1951, due to a neck injury she received in a basketball game. She attended the Washington School for Secretaries from which she graduated in 1952. She held a position of private secretary with an advertising firm (B.B.D. & O.) in New York, during which time she lived with her aunts and uncles at 998 Prospect Avenue in Pelham Manor. She then spent some time with her family, in Old Bennington, before taking a secretarial position at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado After a few months, complications arose with her neck injury, and she was forced to resign and return home. After recuperating, she took a position of private secretary with IBM in Hartford Connecticut, and then transferred to IBM in Chicago. She stayed with her cousins, the Van Kennens, in Winnetka, and that is where she met her future husband.

She made her debut on 9 September 1950 at the Westchester Cotillion, held at the Shenorock Shore Club in Rye, New York. In 1953 she became a member of the Junior League. Tabitha married Roger Ballard on 26, November l95O in the Old Firm Church in Old Bennington Vermont, the same church in which her great-great-grandfather was the sixth minister, 1826-30, and in which her paternal grand parents were married in 1894.. They first settled in Winnetka, living in a townhouse for a year before settling down in their house on Elder Lane, which they occupied until December 1966. It was during this period that their three children were born. They then removed to Madison, New Jersey where they reside on East Lane.

Taffy was instrumental in starting the "Pediatric Activities Program" at the Morristown Memorial Hospital, and has been working as a volunteer in that program constantly since 1973. She has also been a Girl Scout Leader from 1970 to 1977, and a girls soft ball team coach for the 1977 and 19?8 seasons. She plays on local tennis and platform tennis teams. She is interested in many arts and crafts, and her talents include great imagination and original ideas, and clever ways of carrying them out.