Gideon Ellis

  General Notes:

GIDEON2 ELLIS (Lt. John1), born about 1663, died after 15 June 1702.

We find no record of a marriage, although he may well have married and had issue.

We have found no printed account suggesting the existence of this man. However, we think the records we found are sufficient to prove his existence and parentage. For example he may possibly have been the father of the Elnathan Ellis of Yarmouth whom we have tentatively assigned to his brother Manoah2 Ellis. Similarly he may conceivably have fathered Jacob3 Ellis or even the Gideon Ellis (#25) who married Anna Clark and Jemimah Wood (although we believe it much more likely that the latter was the son of that name mentioned in the will of Freeman2 Ellis (see below)).
All that we can find concerning him is contained in the following abstracts:

"The widow Elizabeth Ellis having land laid out to common, a 45 acre lot of number 26, called ye woods lott & hath taken up instead three of like quantity in the undivided commons … and is laid out where her son Gideon Ellis now dwelleth [italics ours] ... laid out by Thomas Taber, surveyor ... approved ... to record 10 July 1694" (Rochester Proprietors' Records (copy made in 1882 by Noah Hammond, Town Clerk), p. 91. "land laid out to John Summers-20 acres, adjoining his home lot that he bought of Gideon Ellis, it being a ¼ part of the 80-acre Division ... granted in the year 1697, ... widow Ellis being the first purchaser" (ibid., p. 30). "I, Gideon Ellis of Dartmouth" by deed dated 20 June 1702 for £18. 10s. paid by John White of Rochester in the County of Barnstable "all that my ¼ part of a share of land in Rochester … except 20 acres of Upland ... being that land which I bought of Samuell White Senr. of Rochester as by a deed dated 22 Nov. 1698, with all the fences, orchards and housing" (Records of the Superior Court of Judicature, Room 1401 Court House Annex, Boston, Mass., Docket No. 5463). The Rochester Proprietors' Records, under date 16 Feb. 1714/15, show that "we laid out or measured over the lands formerly laid out to Gideon Ellis [italics ours] Now ... in possession of John Simmonds) ... laid out for 20 acres of the Eighty Acre Division belonging to Elizabeth Ellis and the remainder of the land laid out to the sd Gideon Ellis as before expressed," 15 June 1702 (ibid., p. 119).

If this Gideon Ellis removed to some other county or colony, it would explain why no record of his probate is to be found in Barnstable, Bristol or Plymouth Counties. We will welcome more information from any reader.
[Lt. John & Elizabeth (Freeman) Ellis of Sandwich, Mass by Lydia B. (Phinney) Brownson, of Duxbury, Mass & Maclean W. McLean, of Pittsburg, PA]