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Peter

I am sorry it has taken me so long to follow up on my interim reply.

Firstly, my memory was wrong to suggest that the Quaker Meeting was at Wentworth Woodhouse. It was at Handsworth Woodhouse, the Woodhouse that is just south east of Sheffield (of which it is now a suburb), between Handsworth and Beighton. The Meeting House, built 1688, but rebuilt in 1886, was sold in 1981 and is now a house (9 Meeting House Lane, S13 7PJ) (source: Butler, Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain, p.841).

Quakers in Dinnington and Beighton, where various members of the ELLIS family lived, belonged to Woodhouse Meeting, which in turn was part of Balby Monthly Meeting.

Francis ELLIS who married Ann WILSON was born 1 feb 1680/1, the son of another Francis ELLIS, also of Dinnington, who married Martha ALLEN in Woodhouse Meeting 11 oct 1676. A younger son of the elder Francis ELLIS, James ELLIS 1685-1745, lived at Beighton , and his son, also James, married Anne SHIPLEY of Uttoxeter (a sister of my 4xgt grandfather) in 1753 and subsequently moved to Leicester where he died in 1790. He and Anne were the progenitors of a family who became very prominent in 19th and early 20th century Leicester; they had coal mining and railway interests. One descendant, John Edward ELLIS 1841-1910, was a Liberal MP and a junior minister in the Campbell-Bannerman government.

Of the children of Francis ELLIS and Ann WILSON, whom you have discovered in the Balby MM registers, Francis was a husbandman in Woodhouse, John became a flax dresser in Mansfield (Notts), Henry and Martha died in infancy, and James lived at Beighton and died in 1806 (apparently unmarried but this needs further investigation). I do not know what happened to the eldest, Elizabeth and the youngest William, so William is "available" to be your ancestor, but of course the connection would need to be proved.

I am sending you in an email offlist what I have for this family down to the early C19, with sources.

For your ancestor William, I assume you have an age which fits the 1734 birth. He had a first cousin also called William born in 1724, son of James and Sarah ELLIS. He was administrator of his father's estate in 1745 when he is described as "of Beighton, grocer,"? so is probably the William "of Beighton" whose death in 1768 is recorded in the Balby MM registers, without an age.

There was a William ELLIS buried in Bull Street Meeting House Birmingham 22 8mo/aug 1797, died 19 8mo 1797 aged 63, described as a milkman and "not a member". The age precisely fits the birth in Woodhouse in 1734. A "non-member" buried in a Quaker burial ground must have had some connection with Quakers. It often means they were born and brought up as a Quaker, were disowned for some offence, but continued to attend meetings for worship (disownment only prevented taking part in business meetings, not meetings for worship). Although William ELLIS is a common name and Birmingham is a long way from Sheffield, Quakers were a sufficiently small group that it is worth considering the possibility that they are the same man.

If the man buried in Birmingham was the one born in Woodhouse Meeting in 1734, and if he was still a member when he moved to Birmingham, he should have had a "removal certificate" from Balby MM addressed to Warwickshire North MM, which included Birmingham. Details of that certificate might be in the minutes of one or both of the meetings, or in separate files (if they survive) preserved by either meeting. The records of Balby MM are in Sheffield Archive and those of Warwickshire North in Birmingham City Archives.

?

Chris Pitt Lewis