Richard Ellingwood

A cooper of Boston. His mother died when he was about nine; in 1753 his father became his guardian for his share of his grandfather Robert Rand’s estate (record). In February 1764, in Boston’s smallpox epidemic, “Mr. Richard Ellingwood and Mr. Thomas Raymond who lodge at Mr. Hitchburnes House had the Small Pox”; they “absolutely refused” to go to the hospital until persuaded, and were carried there in a sedan chair (record). A year later his sister married into that Hitchborne family. In April 1765, “Richard Ellingwood of Boston … Cooper” sold his father a quarter of a North End house (record), and in January 1766 he married Sarah Slater.

He was very probably the “Richard Ellinwood, of Boston” commissioned on 9 June 1777 as master of the letter-of-marque schooner Cleora, sixty tons, four carriage guns and eight swivels, fourteen men, “Loaded with Ailwives and Lumber, bound to the French West Indies” (record); no other Richard Ellingwood is found in Boston then. In 1782 “Mrs. Sarah Ellingwood” was licensed to retail in Cross Street, where the family’s houses stood. He died in 1784, a few months before his father; his widow administered a small household estate on 5 November (record).

His sons, placed under a guardian in November 1785: Richard and Joseph (“Son of Richard Ellingwood late of said Boston”), and Ralph and William (“Grand Son of Israel Ellingwood”). No record of their births or baptisms has been found.