Henrico County, VA - Biography: Thomas Harding Ellis, 1814 - 1898 File submitted for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: MaryCeline Scott ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net ************************************************************************ Please find below a biography of Thomas Harding Ellis, best known to his relatives for "A Memorandum of the Ellis Family" published in 1849 Photocopy found in Amherst Historical Society, VA (aparently from Historical Soc. of VA book): ----------- Thomas Harding Ellis (1814-1898), Edgar Allan Poe's boyhood companion, sat in 1836 for the minature shown in the accompanying plate. It was recently presented to the Society by the subject's great-great-nephew, Mr. A Churchill Young, Jr. Charles Ellis, the subject's father, was a business associate of Poe's foster parent, John Allan, who, along with Mrs. Allan and the eleven year old Poe, resided for some twelve months in the Ellis household upon returning to RIchmond in 1820 from an extended sojourn in England. Poe, although five years senior to Tom Ellis, took the younger lad under his wind, introduced him to the delights of the "enchanted garden" and taught him how to skate, shoot, swim, and play bandy. The friendship flourished until Pe left Richmond in 1826 to matriculate at the University of Virginia. It is pleasantly recalled in a memoir penned by Ellis late in life, a memoir frequently cited in biographies of the poet. But it is unfair to hang this brief sketch of Ellis on the peg of his friendship with Poe. None of the lengthy memorial resolutions and obituary notices published at the time of his death even mentioned the relationship. Ellis, in short, could stand on his own two feet. After graduating from the University of Virginia, he spent several years in Mexico as secretary of the American legation, but returned to RIchmond in 1841 to assume control of the family business. The highly successful firm, successor to the Ellis & Allan Tobacco Company, was dissolved in 1853, whereupon Ellis succeeded John Young Mason as president of the James River & Kanawha Canal Company. At the request of Governeor Letcher, he continued in that capacity throughout the Civil War, serving also as colonel of the Richmond Home Guards. In 1868, in partnership with Matthew Fontaine Maury, he formed a real estate firm, but in 1870 removed to Chicago, where in time he became president of the Bank of Chicago, During the final thirteen years of his life, he was associated in an advisory capacity with the Auditor's Office o the Treasury Department in Washiton, D.C. Ellis, a man of cultivated tastes, both literary and artistic, was actively involved throughout his life in civic and philanthropic enterprises. A great patron of the theatre, for example, he preserved many of the early nineteenth-century Richmond playbills that are now incorporated in the Society's collections. If not the originator, he was one of several devoted graduates of the University of Virginia who formed the Alumni Association of that institution, and in 1850 was the initiator of the subscription to acquire a full-siz copy of Raphael's "School of Athens" for installation in the annex to Mr. Jefferson's rotunda. Colonel Ellis was also active in the affairs of the VIrginia Branch of the American Colonization Society, and in the world turned 'round after the CIcvil War, was a promoter of the Virginia Immigration Society. He occasionally contributed, moreover, to such journals as the Southern Literary Messenger and the Southern Historical Society Papers. For other easons, however, Colonel Ellis is best remembered in the rooms where these words are written: he became a member of the Virginia Historical Society in 1837, was elected to the Society's Executive Committee in 1847, in 1868 succeeed Dr. George W. Bagby as the Society's Corresponding Secretary, and was the Society's benefactor on numberous occasions. He died in his native Richmond while visiting his sister Mrs. George Wyther Munford, on April 11, 1898, and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, having providentially served in 1846 as one of the originators and as the first president of the Hollywood Association.