George Ellis

Yeoman of Plymouth: “George Ellis of the town and County of Plymouth … Yeoman” in deeds of 1788-1796. He married Phebe Stephens at Plympton on 23 May 1773, “Georg Eless and Phebe Stephens,” having been published at Middleborough as “Mr. George Ellis of Middleborough & Mrs. Phebe Stephens of Plimpton.” On 16 Nov 1773 he sold meadows at Southworth Marsh (a deed cited in 1789; FamilySearch 3:1:3QS7-L9Z7-P7ZF). Deeds of 1791-1797 call adjoining land “George Ellis homestead which was Nathaniel Donhams homestead,” near Southers Marsh in the Plymouth-Plympton commons. He bought the Plymouth farm of his father-in-law Edward Stephens from the estate, “the farm in Plymouth with the Buildings thereon occupied by George Ellis & to him sold” (1789-94). He witnessed wills and served as agent and trustee in a 1790 court case.

Probably the George Ellis “Chosen to take care of Plimouth beach” in 1774 and fence viewer and field driver in 1777. A George Ellis marched from Plymouth to Bristol, R.I., in Capt. Robert Finney’s company in December 1776, and a “George Ellis” is among the Plymouth “Enlistments for thirty days’ service in Rhode Island in September, 1777,” under Capt. Nathaniel Goodwin (Hurd, History of Plymouth County, 1884, pp. 145-146), the company that Mass. Soldiers and Sailors describes as “on a secret expedition against Newport, R. I.”; very probably he. The earlier note that he guarded Burgoyne’s surrendered army is wrong: the Plymouth list of men “raised to serve as guard to the prisoners who surrendered with Gen. Burgoyne” follows the Rhode Island list on the same page of Hurd and names Thomas Ellis, not George.

A Plymouth list of evidence against suspected Tories, about 1777, has: “Mrs Ellis Says about Seven months ago Mr Churchell Came to her house & talked Verry high against America” (Records of the Town of Plymouth 3). Which Mrs. Ellis is not stated.

In May 1784 the family moved from Plymouth to Plympton, and on 28 Mar 1785 the Plympton selectmen warned “George Ellis and his Wife Phebe and seven Children viz. Sarah, Phebe, Molly, George, Matthias, Nancy & Stevens forthwith to depart this Town,” noting that they “came into [this] Town some time in the Month of May in the year one Thousand seven Hundred and eighty four, and were last from the Town of Plymouth.” The order, given “at Plimton this Twenty eighth Day of March Anno Domini 1785,” was signed by the selectmen Thomas Gannett and Isaac Churchill, and on 19 April the constable, Gideon Bradford Jr., returned that he had warned “George Ellis & his Wife Phebe & seven Children” to depart “to the Town they were last from.” Warning out was the legal step by which a Massachusetts town avoided taking on a newcomer’s poor relief; it did not by itself remove anyone. The family was back in Plymouth by 1788. George and Phebe were third cousins, both great-great-grandchildren of John Churchill and Hannah Pontus.

“George Ellis’s Wife” is in the Plymouth church list of deaths on 24 Nov 1789 (Plymouth Church Records, CSM 22:417), probably Phebe. On 4 June 1792 he married Experience Clark of Plymouth. On 22 May 1805 his children by Phebe quitclaimed to “our Brother George Ellis Junr of Plymouth … Mariner” pasture land near Seth Harlow’s homestead by the Training field, a right in Harlow’s Cedar Swamp, and woodland, “decended to us from our Mother Phebe Ellis Decd who was formerly Phebe Stephens.” The grantors (read from the image) were “Elisha Morton & Sarah his wife of Hebron at the Eastward, Azel Thomas & Phebe his wife of Middleborough, Polly Ellis, Richard Blackmore & Nancy his wife, Zeba [?] Ellis, Stephen Ellis & George Ellis all of Plymouth, Mattathias Ellis of Wareham … & Isaac Ellis of said Middleborough”; Nancy signed “Nancy Ellis Blackmer.” About 1808 “George Ellis & Experiance Ellis” joined the other heirs of William Clark of Plymouth in selling Clark’s land, the last record found of him.

No record uses a middle name “David”; the FamilySearch tree’s “George David Ellis” may come from a merge with David Ellis of Hanover (b. 1744).

Open questions

• When and where did he die? A Plymouth County probate for him might name his children and settle who Ziba and Isaac Ellis were.
• Is he the second “George Ellis” among the grantors of the 1805 quitclaim?