Sarah was born in Rupert's Land, i.e. the Hudson Bay drainage basin, part of British North America deeply involved in the fur trade.
She was one of eight children of Alexander Roderick McLeod, chief trader for the Hudson's Bay Company, and a mixed-blood mother (see Marriage 'à la façon du pays' and Anglo-Métis).
At Red River she met John Ballenden, a newly appointed Scottish accountant at Upper Fort Garry, whom she married in 1836.
In 1850, Sarah Ballenden found herself involved in a situation which became known as the Foss-Pelly scandal, characterised by Joseph James Hargrave in his 1871 history Red River as a cause célèbre (as quoted in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography[1]).
The situation was only resolved when Eden Colvile arrived in post, and dispatched the Pelly couple, Captain Foss, and the Ballendens away from the colony.