ELLIS family

Everyone has heard about William Webb Ellis, the Rugby schoolboy who “picked up the ball and ran” but what else do we know about him?

For a start, his surname was not WEBB ELLIS – the Webb part is just his second Christian name. So the Rugby World Cup trophy should either be the William Webb Ellis cup or the Ellis cup, not the Webb Ellis cup.

William Webb ELLIS was baptised on 24th Nov 1806 in Salford, Lancashire. His parents were James and Ann ELLIS, who were married on 15th Mar 1804 at Exeter Cathedral. James Ellis was born in 1772 in Upton on Severn, Worcestershire and was an officer in the 3rd Dragoon Guards during the Peninsular War; he was killed in 1812 at Albuera in Spain.

William’s mother was Ann WEBB and was supposedly born at Upton St Leonards. As is quite common in family history, a mother’s maiden name has been used as a child’s Christian name. After James’s death Ann moved to Rugby with William’s older brother, Thomas Ellis, in order to take advantage of free education at Rugby School. William became a clergyman and died unmarried in 1872. Thomas Ellis is supposed to have married but had no children. What happened to Thomas?

All that could be found on the Internet was the fact that he was born in London in December 1804 (his baptism on 13 Jan 1805 at St Martin in Fields is in the IGI) and became a doctor.

Having had problems finding William on the census (I still haven’t found him in 1861) I didn’t have much confidence in finding Thomas, but I searched the 1851 census on Ancestry.co.uk for a Thomas Ellis, born 1804 in London. Top of the list came someone who was living in Dunchurch and looking at the original image showed that he was a General Practitioner – this looked like him. I quickly found him in 1841 (in Mill Street, Dunchurch) as a Surgeon and 1861 as Surgeon and L.A.S. . The census also listed a wife, Elizabeth, born in Dunchurch but no children.

There was no mention of him in 1871 so he must have died by then. I checked the name index on the CD of Dunchurch Parish Registers, published by RFHG and found two references to a Thomas Ellis: a marriage in 1833 and a burial in 1868. There are no other Ellis entries for Dunchurch.

The marriage entry showed me that he had married Elizabeth Mason on 11 Jan 1833, they were both single.

 The burial showed that Thomas Ellis age 64 of Dunchurch was buried on 11 Dec 1868. This gave me a date to search in the Rugby Advertiser and I found the following announcement:

 

No real proof here that I have got the right Thomas Ellis but everything seems to fit and the mention of the military servants fits with his father being in the army – was Thomas also in the Army for a while?

There is no mention in the obituary of his brother William, who was to die four years later in Menton, but he only became famous in the 1890s when Matthew Bloxam said that William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and started the game of Rugby.