Deep Rooted in South Dedham: The Ellis Family

Royal Ellis (1771-1840)

Betsey Morse Ellis (1782-1878)

Isaac Newton Ellis (1810-1893)

David M. Ellis (1821-1898)

Royal Ellis was born on March 15, 1771. His parents were William Ellis and Olive Fairbanks Ellis.

On April 29, 1807 Royal Ellis married Betsey Morse, who was born in 1782 in Walpole. She was the daughter of David and Sybil Morse. Royal and Betsey Ellis had three children: Isaac Newton Ellis, born November 26, 1810; Roxa Ellis, born on August 14, 1813; and David M. Ellis, born on January 22, 1821.

Royal Ellis was a farmer. He died in 1840. Following in his father’s footsteps, Isaac Ellis was a farmer. In the 1870 U.S. Census, he and his brother David, who was a wheelwright, continued to live on the family farm with their mother.

Roxa Ellis married twice. She was first married to Joseph Morse on January 29, 1837. They had child, a daughter, Cynthia. Joseph Morse died in Walpole in 1839. On April 8, 1842, Roxa Ellis Morse married Rev. Edwin Thompson, a Universalist minister. Roxa Ellis Morse Thompson died on December 31, 1848 of tuberculosis. She is interred in lot 9, the Thompson family lot, in Old Parish Cemetery.

In 1872, when Norwood was incorporated as an independent town, Isaac Newton Ellis became both a surveyor of highways, a position that entailed the maintenance of roadways, and one of the community’s first Engineers of the Fire Department.

Betsey Morse Ellis died on May 29, 1878 of bronchitis.

Isaac Ellis and David Ellis never married. Isaac Newton Ellis died on November 25, 1893 of old age. He was 83 years old. His brother David M. Ellis, the last of the family, died on August 27, 1898 in Westwood. The cause of his death was listed as “softening of the brain.”