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Note: NATHAN SHERMAN ELLIS
Nathan Sherman Ellis was born 18 Mar 1864 in Hartstown, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, the second child of Cyrus Stilton and Martha Ann (Rudy) Ellis. According to Milo Miller in hes book Cyrus and Martha moved with their family including "Nate" to the "west." However, during the early 1870's they went back to Pennsylvania so that Cyrus and Martha could aid in settling the Rudy estate. They apparently lived on the Rudy place for some time engaging in farming. Then they moved to Hartstown. Milo Miller in his book on the Ellis family reports that Cyrus soon became restless and returned to Kansas with his family. Nate's daughter Helen said that her father had remembered returning to Pennsylvania and meeting cousins, aunts, and uncles when he was still a young boy.
Before 1880 Cyrus and family moved to Ohio. In the 1880 census they were in Adams County, Iowa. Cyrus and Martha's eighth and last child, Fred Valentine, was reported to have been born in St. Joseph, MO, 14 Feb 1882, so perhaps the family was living there at the time. It is likely that Cyrus' family was in southeast Kansas in 1883 when the oldest daughter Addie was married to George Thompson. Addie and George lived in Opolis, KS until they died in the 1940's. Sometime before 1887 Cyrus moved his family to Douglas County, Missouri to homestead a place because the family was living there when Nate's mother Martha died 6 Nov 1887 and she was buried in the Denlow, MO cemetery.
Nate's father married again 2 Feb 1889 to Sarah Elizabeth Cunningham. They were living in Douglas County at the time. They had two children born in Douglas and Wright Counties in Missouri. Sometime probably between 1893 and 1896 they moved to the Opolis, KS vicinity. Nate stayed in Douglas County where he was homesteading his own place south of his father's place and had built a home on it.
28 Oct 1894, at the age of thirty, Nate married Luminda Amon Downs in Douglas County. All their ten children were born in Douglas County, some of the older children marrying residents of the area.
Luminda Amon Downs was born 11 Oct 1876 in Henry County, Tennessee the ninth child of David Downs and probably the third child of Nellie (Wainscott) Downs. She was the second child of David and Nellie's. Both parents having children by previous marriages. When "Amon" was ten years old her mother died. David Downs moved several times with his family. Besides living in Tennessee, they also lived in Shannon and Douglas Counties in Missouri. After attempting to go to Oklahoma during the land rush, probably in 1889, they turned back toward Willow Springs, MO when their supplies ran out. On the way back across Missouri they stopped in Douglas County when they were able to go no further. They remained there for some time and it was there where Nate Ellis met and married Amon Downs.
In about 1919 Nate Ellis sold the homestead place to I.P. Henson and moved about one half mile to another farm his younger brother had started to buy that Nate had signed the note on. Because of the difficulty in making an adequate living on this ridge farm, in about 1921, he rented a bottom farm about nine miles away near Denlow, MO that had belonged to Austin and Eva Cox, the parents of their daughter's husband Opha. Nate's oldest son John and his wife Audra were allowed to live on the home place.
In February of 1926 Nate and Amon rented the Thompson farm located just north of Crocker Cemetery which was south of Pittsburg, KS. He moved his family the 175 miles from Douglas County thus ending his efforts at making a living in the Ozark hills of south central Missouri. Several of his brothers and sisters were already living in the Pittsburg, KS area.
In 1929 the family moved to the Campbell place located on the Barton/Jasper County line about one and a half miles east of the Kansas/Missouri state line. It was here that Helen met Mac Seal whom she married two years later.
Nate had not been well and in December 1934 they had an auction sale and moved to Harlingen, TX where Gladys and her husband Dan had bought a small farm where they could take care of them. Lester and Alpha were
their only children still at home with them at this time. They lived the remaining years of their lives here. Nate died 18 Aug 1944 following a prostate operation and Amon died 19 Mar 1953.
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