James Elias Ellison (1820 - 1907)

Born 14 Aug 1820 in Giles, Virginia, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Sarah (Mitchell) Ellison — married 21 Mar 1837 in Logan, Virginia, United States

Descendants

Died 7 Jan 1907 at age 86 in Anderson, Madison, Indiana, United States

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Gene Ellison [send private message] and Carl Rhodes [send private message]

This profile is part of the Forks of Coal, West Virginia One Place Study.

Biography

Poet and preacher the Reverend James Elias Ellison was born in 1820 on the New River Ridge farm of James Isaac III and Mary "Polly" Callaway Ellison near the Farley Fort and Meetinghouse^[1], (likey Giles County, possibly Greenbrier) Virginia, in the vicinity of what is now Bluestone Lake, Summers County, WV. James was the youngest of their 14 children.

The following bio was taken largely from ^[2]. However, due to numerous errors it has been, in part, amended here. No original source was given on the FindaGrave memorial.

For his autobiography, please see The City of Living Soul, Discovered in a Dream.

"When James was about nine years old his family moved to Sandlick in the Coal Marsh area of what was to become Raleigh County, WV. James was a charter member of the Coal Marsh Baptist Church at Glen Daniel and thought to have been baptized there in 1834 (perhaps in spirit, for the church wasn't established until 1836),^[3] the same year he lost his father; his mother died in late 1835.

For a time James worked for his brother Matthew at Coal Marsh. Later he moved to (the area of what was to become) Boone County, where he worked in his brother Amos' saw and grist mills, took subscription courses, and taught school for three months. While teaching, he boarded with the James Mitchell family and fell in love with their daughter Sarah. The 17 year old school-teacher had 10 cents and his 18 year old bride had 12.5 when her father married them March 21, 1837, probably in the Olive Branch Baptist Church where Mitchell was preacher, the second preacher in a what was to become a long line of ministers.

During their first year of marriage they lived in a two-room house that they built themselves, and worked for her father for $10/month and board. They then rented a nearby farm until 1849; it was here that Sarah bore James the first six of their eleven children. He was licensed to preach in the Olive Branch Church in 1842 and became their 6th minister. Around 1848 he was ordained in the Forks of Coal Baptist Church, Kanawha County, VA, in 1849 moved to Elk River, Slaughter's Creek in 1851, and then to a farm located just south of Charleston, Virginia in 1853. This last move allowed James to preach at the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. [Note: the timeline of these various moves and children conflicts not only with Ellison's testimony during the Trial of Preston Turley, but with logic. See Trial Section below.]

While James traveled to preach, Sarah bore him 5 more children. He helped organize the Lily Creek Church in Orestes, Madison Co., Indiana in 1858; later he arranged to move there in 1860, "The best day's work I ever did for my family" he wrote in his autobiography.^[4] They traveled down the Kanawha River on Captain Snelling Farley's Ellen Gray stern wheel steamboat, past Point Pleasant where James Elias' gr-grandfather Francis Farley Jr. and grandfather James Ellison II had helped defeat Chief Cornstalk in 1774 [the Battle of Point Pleasant] and then on down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. From there they probably traveled on the Cincinnati to Chicago Railroad, which was completed to Anderson, Indiana in 1857.

James continued to farm, traveled as a Baptist preacher, and helped in the founding of several churches. After Sarah died in 1882, he took a 4 month trip to West Virginia to visit old friends and family and preach wherever he could. He began writing a series of religious poems and a book "The City of Living Soul, Discovered in a Dream", which was published in 1887. This book includes his autobiography, which tells of his preaching in 60+ churches in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and includes the picture of James above [attached to the FindaGrave memorial]. He married his 2nd wife Nancy Caroline Wood in 1889^[5]. She died about 1905. James died on Jan. 07, 1907 while living with his daughter Evaline in Anderson, Indiana."^[6]

Census

• 1850 U.S. Census

"United States Census, 1850" Document Information: Household ID 1053 Line Number 1 Affiliate Name The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Affiliate Publication Number M432 Affiliate Film Number 954 GS Film Number 444944 Digital Folder Number 004206376 Image Number 00145 Citing this Record "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M8D4-15P : 29 February 2020), James E Ellison, Kanawha county, part of, Kanawha, Virginia, United States; citing family 1053, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

• 1860 U.S. Census

"1860 U.S. Federal Population Census," Name James E Ellison | Age 39 | Birth Year 1821 | Gender Male | Birth Place Virginia |Home in 1860 Kanawha, Virginia | National Archives and Records Administration URL http://www.archives.gov/

Trial of Preston Turley

At the time of the murder of Mary Susan (West) Turley in late January of 1858, Rev. James E. Ellison was serving as pastor of the Forks of Coal Baptist Church, Kanawha, Virginia. Many of the priciples involved in the Trial were, had been, or came to be members of that congregation.

Ellison was a critical witness, both for the prosecution and the defence. A man deemed worthy of intelligence and respect, Ellison was central to the search for Susan's body. Calling off church, Ellison and others divided their efforts into searching upstream and down, both on water and in the woods surrounding Forks of Coal, especally that section "between Alum Creek and the Midkiff's." (The banks of Alum Creek being where Turley found his missing wife's alleged "tracks," and where he told the searches he feared she had flung herself into the river.)

Ellison had his suspicions. Late on a Thursday evening after a supper Ellison pronounced his suspicions alound, and, after a brief consultation, the party of men changed their focus, moving to Lock Four of the Coal River, opposite the direction Turley had led them. It wasn't long before before the hue and cry was raised: the rake had pulled up Susan's body. Ellison was on the gunwale that raised her, and his eye-witness testimony, plus his familiarity with the comings and goings of the little community were deftly used by the prosecution.

That said, the defence lawyers hit back at Ellison, charging him with grandstanding, and working to improperly influence the community against Turley. A poem Ellison had written was handed to him on the stand; he admitted to its authorship, and confessed that he had tried to get it published, read it at meetings and at parties. The poem was admitted as evidence.

"She's gone, she's gone; my Susan's gone!"

The poem begins, speaking in the voice of Preston Turley:

"I know not where, - but here are tracks

Her shoes have made, - she must be down

In water, earth, or in the breaks..."

"Insane, and wandering through the woods,

Or mad, and in the river drowned;

She opposed the selling off my goods,

And bitterly my sale bemoaned."

From Ellison we do learn some things about the "transaction," as he calls the events of the week, in terms of logistics if nothing else.

By crowds the neighbors gathered in,

Right straight to work they all did go;

A mighty host and mightier din,

All streaming off to search below.

With rakes, and grabs, and rafts, and crafts,

The rocks and sands they did explore,

Closely examining all the drifts

From bank to bank, from shore to shore...

Ellison also uses the poem to give himself credit for his prescience:

'Twas now that I my judgement gave,

In reference to the lost one's state;

"Below the dam she's found a grave,

And P. S. Turley knows her fate!"

While not epic in length, the poem runs 28 stanzas and covers many of the more sensational aspects of the crime as well as Ellison's own pronoucements on the character of those involved, including this stanza, which must have caught the attention of Turley's defense team when the poem became public:

His wretched, base, abandoned life,

His wantonness and cruelty, Led him thus to destroy his wife, And suffer all the penalty...

The poem, published before the jury selection began, was a minor sensation. Ellison testified that he did not know how it became published, but admitted that he himself has asked both the Republican and Kanawha Star to print it, and was turned down twice. Yes, he had "sung it several times by request," had also sung it Allen Smith's, and maybe at a wedding, "but never at a funeral or baptism;" that was as far as he went with it.

"Do you consider yourself to be a poet?" Defence Council Miller asked Ellison.

"No," Ellison answered, "I do not profess to be a poet. But I do rhyme a little sometimes."

In his Sept 1858 testimony, Ellison remarks that he's been the pastor at Forks of Coal Baptist Church "some six or seven years," i.e., from about 1851 or '52 onward. Before that, Preston hisself has been a lay preacher at the same church and married a number of couples there. ^[7]

Of note, in his book The City of Living Soul, etc., Ellison recounts a rivaly he shared with the Rev. William Gilbert of Elkview, Kanawha County, to wit:

"After preaching more or less for the above-named churches for about nine years [churches on the Coal River - ed.], we left Turtle Creek, Boone County, and moved to Elk River, Kanawha County, where I labored for about two years in connection with Rev. William Gilbert, who was very companionable, but a little tricky, and after giving him a sound, brotherly down-sitting, because of the ungodly use, or rather abuse, of his tongue (which originated from a spirit of rivalry), I left Elk and moved to Slaughter's Creek, at which place a church had been planted under my labors while yet residing on Elk."^[8]

Afterward, Ellison moves to another church up at Slaughter's Creek near the town of Montgomery.

Although further work needs to be done vis a vis the dates in question, Preston Turley, in the way of a deathbed confession to Rev. Clark, relates that his own downward spiral into sin began with a rivalry between himself and another preacher for an ordination at the Forks of Coal Baptist Church. This rivalry included a preaching duel, which Turley lost. The rival preacher is not named. There is some circumstantial evidence that it might have been Eli Midkiff, but there is also evidence that it was Ralph Ellison:

"I was beckoned to come into the pulpit [at the Forks of Coal Presbytery], and informed immediately that I must preach a test sermon [emphasis Ellison's]. My text was, "For the love of Christ constraineth us because we judge, " &c. I had never felt more childlike. In short, I was ordained, and from that day to this have borne credentials, unsullied and uninterrupted."^[9]

Sources

1. ↑ https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=140095
2. ↑ FindaGrave
3. ↑ https://www.wvgenweb.org/raleigh/church/coal.htm
4. ↑ Ellison, James E. The City of Living Soul, Discovered In a Dream. Greenfield, Ind.: William Mitchell, 1887.
5. ↑ "West Virginia Marriages, 1780-1970," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F12Q-SZT : 11 February 2018), James Eli Ellison and Nancy Caroline Wood, 12 Sep 1888; citing Ansted, West Virginia, rn 399, county clerks, West Virginia; FHL microfilm 584,765.
6. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/83386477/james-elias-ellison : accessed 18 June 2022), memorial page for Rev James Elias Ellison (14 Aug 1820–7 Jan 1907), Find a Grave Memorial ID 83386477, citing Mechanicsburg Cemetery, Mechanicsburg, Henry County, Indiana, USA ; Maintained by ernie miller (contributor 47185438) .
7. ↑ The Trial, etc., of Preston S. Turley, pamphlet, published by the Kanawha Star, 1858, pages 12-14. https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://www.executedtoday.com/files/Preston_Turley.pdf
8. ↑ Ellison, James E. The City of Living Soul, Discovered in a Dream. William Mitchell, Steam Book and Job Printer, Greenfield, Indiana. 1887. Page 14.
9. ↑ Ellison, James E. The City of Living Soul, Discovered in a Dream. William Mitchell, Steam Book and Job Printer, Greenfield, Indiana. 1887. Page 13.

• 1887 Marriage Records Indiana (Son: Felis E. Ellison)

"Indiana, Select Marriages Index, 1748-1993," Name J. E. Ellison | Gender Male | Spouse Sarah Mitchell | Child Felis E. Ellison |URL https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XFD3-BP1 | Courtesy FamilySearch.org

Acknowledgements

Gregory Morris for fact-checking and amending the FindaGrave biography, adding the section on the Trial of Preston Turley, and linking Ellison to the Forks of Coal OPS.