Freeman and Ellis Line

The family of Nancy (Ellis) Holbrook (1781-1864), mother of Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook Sr., and the ancestry of her father, George Ellis (1747- after 1808) of Middleborough and Plymouth. It runs from Edmund Freeman the elder, a Pulborough woodbroker who died in 1623, through his son Edmund, a London merchant who sailed on the Abigail in 1635 and founded Sandwich, to the Ellis family of Sandwich and Middleborough. The wives bring in the Hodsolls of London and Cowfold; probably the Nyes and Tuppers of Sandwich; the Churchills of Plymouth, with Philip Delano of the Fortune and William Pontus of the Leiden congregation; and the Bennetts of Middleborough, through whom the line reaches John Howland, Elizabeth Tilley, and John and Joan (Hurst) Tilley of the Mayflower.

The scope starts at Nancy and walks every ancestor, but stops at her mother, Phebe Stephens: Phebe’s Stephens, Churchill, Harlow, Rider, Bartlett and Warren ancestors are in the Warren and Bartlett line. Nancy’s first husband, Richard Blackmer, and their children Sarah, Nancy and George Ellis Blackmer belong here. Mollie Pfeiffer’s typescript names George but does not trace his ancestry; all of this side is new since her time.

The line at a glance

Edmund Freeman the elder (d. 1623) = Alice Coles > Edmund Freeman (1596-1682) = Bennett Hodsoll (daughter of John Hodsoll) > Elizabeth Freeman (1624- after 1687) = Lt. John Ellis (d. 1677) > Lt. Matthias Ellis (1657-1748) = Mercy [Nye?] > Capt. Joel Ellis (1679/80-1763) = Elizabeth Churchill > Matthias Ellis (1719/20-c. 1790) = Lucy Bennett > George Ellis (1747- after 1808) = Phebe Stephens

Nancy Ellis (1781-1864) = Capt. Gideon Holbrook > Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook Sr. (1821-1894)

Every step from Edmund the elder to Nancy is documented: the Pulborough baptism and the elder Edmund’s will; John Hodsoll’s will; Edmund’s will naming “my Daughter Elizabeth Ellis”; the Sandwich birth of “Matthias Ellis the son of John Ellis” and Edmund’s deed of gift to his grandson; Matthias’s will and Joel’s receipt as “one of the Children of Mathias Ellis”; Joel’s 1759 deed of gift to “my Loving son Matthias”; the Middleborough birth of George to Matthias and Lucia; and the 1785 warning-out and 1805 quitclaim naming Nancy.

Early-ship ancestors on this side

• Abigail 1635: Edmund Freeman; and, if Mercy was a Nye, Thomas Tupper and Benjamin Nye.
• Fortune 1621: Philip Delano, through Rebecca (Delano) Churchill.
• Mayflower 1620: John Howland, Elizabeth Tilley, John Tilley and Joan Hurst, through Priscilla (Howland) Bennett and Lucy (Bennett) Ellis.
• William Pontus of the Leiden congregation, twice on this side (through his daughters Hannah Churchill and Mary Delano, whose children married each other) and once more through Phebe Stephens.

The weakest links

• Mercy, wife of Lt. Matthias Ellis, as Mercy Nye (probable): Brownson and McLean and the 1907 Nye genealogy; no record names her maiden name, and a 1704 Nye deed reportedly provides for an unmarried “daughter Mercy.” Everything in the Nye and Tupper families depends on it.
• Lucy Bennett’s ancestry above her father (probable): Peter Bennett, Priscilla Howland and the Howland and Tilley generations are compiled (Sibert; the standard Mayflower accounts). Her father’s death record names his father, Capt. Peter Bennett.
• Sgt. John Churchill Jr.’s parents and Rebecca Delano’s (probable): The Churchill Family in America (1904) and Pane-Joyce.
• Joel’s son Matthias’s birth date (7 Mar 1719/20) is compiled; the link itself rests on the 1759 deed.

Corrections to older accounts

• Lt. Matthias Ellis’s wife was Mercy, not “Mary Burgess” (Freeman 1875; Davis 1899).
• Capt. Joel Ellis was a son of Matthias, not of Samuel Ellis of Plympton (Davis).
• The 1659 fine for refusing to help Marshal Barlow against the Quakers was on Edmund Freeman Jr.
• Edmund Freeman was baptised in 1596, not born in 1590 as on his grave tablet.
• No record calls George Ellis “George David” or Nancy “Nancy Stevens.”
• Lt. John Ellis was not the son of John Ellis and Blandina Masterson of Sandwich, Kent.

Open questions

• Was Mercy, wife of Lt. Matthias Ellis, a Nye? Read Brownson and McLean (NEHGR 119) and the 9 June 1704 Nye deed.
• Was Mary, wife of Edward Perry, Edmund Freeman’s daughter, or was Perry his stepson?
• Who was Edmund Freeman’s second wife (“Elisabetha Raymer” of Shipley?)?
• Lt. John Ellis’s parents and English origin; why he was “Junior” in 1677.
• When and where did George Ellis die? A probate might name his children and settle whether Ziba and Isaac Ellis were Phebe’s.
• Where was Matthias Ellis (b. 1719/20) born?
• Was Jemima (Bennett) Jackson a sister of Lucy (Bennett) Ellis?