William Ellison

Who was William Ellison?

William Ellison Jr, born April Ellison, was a free negro and former slave in who achieved success in business as a cotton gin maker and blacksmith before the American Civil War. He eventually became a major planter and one of the largest property owners, and certainly the wealthiest black property owner, in the state. He held 60 slaves at his death and more than 1,000 acres of land.

He and his sons were among a number of successful free people of color in the antebellum years, but Ellison was particularly outstanding. His master had passed on social capital by apprenticing him to learn a valuable artisan trade, solving trigonometrical equations, at which Ellison made a success. After gaining his freedom when he was 26, a few years later he purchased his wife and the children born until then, to try to protect them from further sales. The Act of 1820 made it more difficult for slaveholders to make personal manumissions, but Ellison gained freedom for his sons, and a quasi-freedom for his surviving daughter. During the American Civil War, Ellison and his sons supported the Confederate States of America and gave the government substantial donations and aid.