Faulk County, SD Biographies.....Ellis, Caleb Holt 1825 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com January 10, 2005, 5:47 pm

Author: C. H. Ellis



    CAPTAIN CALEB HOLT ELLIS was born November 18th, 1825, in the town of Weld,

in the then county of Oxford, state of Maine, where he resided with his parents

until he was twelve years of age, attending the common schools. Among his early

teachers were Dr. Fondice Barker and one or two of that renowned family of

Abbotts. Nature was lavish of her gifts to that immediate vicinity. A beautiful

sheet of water two miles wide and seven miles long, teeming with shining

mountain stream trout, surrounded by broad intervales and table land extending

to the very foot of high mountains with lofty peaks, made a landscape sublime in

grandeur, well calculated for lasting impressions for coming years. In 1837 his

parents moved to Sangeville Village, in Piscataquis county, where for .nearly

six years he enjoyed the advantages of one of the best common and high schools

of that day. Then, in his eighteenth year, after six days journey, weary and

sore footed, he was transferred to another school, one of toil, privation,

exposure and hardship, in the wilderness, in the then territory of Northeastern

Maine, in the lumber woods, on the rivers driving lumber, in the mills, clearing

land of its vast growth 'of timber; ten long years of constant toil, ten years

of constant physical training, as looked back upon through subsequent years, ten

years of most valuable, physical, moral and intellectual discipline; ten years

of actual well rounded physical manhood.



    In the winter of 1854 he was granted a local preacher's license by the Fort

Fairfield Quarterly Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church and in June of

that year appointed preacher-in-charge of the Western and Topsfield circuit in

the East Maine conference of that church, and the following year was reappointed

to the Wesley and Northfield charge, and in 1856 to the Franklin, Sullivan and

Gouldsboro circuit. At Sullivan there was an extensive revival and many

conversions which made it necessary to form a new circuit of Sullivan and

Gouldsboro, and Hancock was added to the Franklin charge. At the end of this

year (1857) he was appointed to the East Macheas charge where he preached until

the opening of the Civil War. He then received the appointment of Chaplain in

the Eleventh Regiment, Maine Volunteer Infantry and was attached to the second

brigade of General Casey's division of Keyes' corps, Army of the Potomac and was

stationed on Meridian Hill, Washington, D. C., in the winter of 1861 and 1862,

but joined McClellan at Fortress Monroe and took part in the first Peninsular

campaign. At the time that regiment was ordered south Mr. Ellis lay sick with

typhoid fever at the Chesepeake general hospital. He subsequently resigned the

chaplaincy and gave his time and influence in enlisting men for the Union army.

In the winter of 1864 he was requested by Governor Coney of Maine to assist in

the organization of the 31st Regiment of Maine Volunteer Infantry. In this

enterprise he was more than successful, having secured men in excess of a full

quoto for his company. The 31st joined Burnside at Annapolis, Maryland, and

participated in the memorable Battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania and in

the rapid "On to Richmond." On the 7th of June, 1864, after the bloody battle of

the second and third of that month, while in command of the picket line Captain

Ellis received a shell wound in his left breast, causing paralysis of the left

side, and was by the division surgeon declared to be in a dying condition.



    This ended his army service. The following October he was discharged from

the Annapolis hospital for total disability. It was nearly three years before he

was able to lay away his crutches and resume work in the ministry. From that

time on there has been suffering to interfere with an active business life, at

times so severe as to compel him to abandon employment and seek climatic

changes. In 1876 he was compelled to ask for a supernumerary relation in the

Michigan annual conference of the Metnoclist Episcopal church and flee to the

gulf coast of Texas, and again in March, 1882, to seek the high altitude and

clear bracing atmosphere of South Dakota, and again after an absence of nearly

twenty years, to seek new life and energy in the far famed Dakota climate.



    Captain Ellis is proud of his Puritanic ancestry, tracing back by seven

distinct lines to Plymouth Rock. His Great Grandmother Ellis was Sarah Bradford,

the fifth generation from William Bradford, who came in the Mayflower to

Massachusetts Bay in 1620. She married Freeman Ellis, the third generation from

John Ellis of Sandwich, who married Elizabeth Freeman in 1645. Governor William

Bradford was for thirty-one years, in all that the title implies, at the head of

the Plymouth Colony. Lydia Fuller was the daughter of Isaac Fuller, a

Revolutionary hero and the fifth from Doctor Samuel Fuller, deacon in Mr.

Robinson's church in Holland and surgeon and physician of the first church in

the Plymouth Colony. In 1800 she married Freeman Ellis of Hartford, in the

district of Maine, son of Freeman and Sarah (Bradford) Ellis of Plympton,

Massachusetts.



    Not only in the Bradford and Fuller lines, but through Richard Warren,

Francis Eaton, Edward Doty, Francis. Cook and Stephen Hopkins, he traces in

unbroken lines, his ancestry to that heroic band that in 1620 laid the

foundation of civil and religious liberty on the bleak New England shore.



    Captain Ellis again and again in South Dakota found a most wonderful health

resort. After a winter of great suffering, in March, 1882, he came to Beadle

county and. located at Wessington, which was followed by greatly improved

health, and again in August of 1907, with wonderful results.



    On January 14, 1849, Captain Ellis married Lydia Hains, daughter of Joseph

Wingate and Mary (Briggs) Hains, of Fort Fairfield, Maine, who was born in

Hollowell Maine, April 12, 1829. To them .were born seven chidren, viz: Ada

Ianthe, who died at Brazoria, Texas, in 1876; Allie Leroy, who died in infancy;

Arthur W., of Faulkton, South Dakota; Ernest Almond, who died at Nashville,

Michigan, in 1870; Olin Howard, now of Hillsdale, Michigan; Mellie May, now Mrs.

Howard Kipp, of Fort Fairfield, Maine, and Adelbert Lincoln, who died in

infancy. Mrs. Ellis died at Ellisville, Faulk county, July 7, 1886. Captain

Ellis subsequently married Mrs. Francis E. Richard, of Fort Fairfield, Maine,

who died in that village in May, 1894. There was another marriage August 6,

1895, to Mrs. Lottie H. Ehrlich, of Boston, Massachusetts. Mrs. Ellis died at

Fort Fairfield, January 22, 1907.



    Now in his eighty-fourth year he, after a most serious breakdown in the

winter of 1907, is again active and vigorous for one of his age, and finds real

enjoyment in literary work.





Additional Comments:
From:



HISTORY OF

FAULK COUNTY

SOUTH DAKOTA

CAPTAIN C. H. ELLIS



TOGETHER WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PIONEERS AND PROMINENT CITIZENS



ILLUSTRATED

19O9

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