Richard Ellis

Ellis studied law with the firm of Wirt and Wickham and joined it in 1806. He moved to Alabama, sat in the 1818 Alabama constitutional convention and, as a circuit judge from 1819, served on that state's supreme court, where his rough manner made him unpopular with the bar. His first trip to Texas, in 1826, was a failed effort to collect a debt, and that December Austin sent him to Nacogdoches to urge Haden Edwards to end his revolt. He moved his household and more than twenty-five enslaved people to Pecan Point in 1834.

What the plaque says

Richard Ellis Born in Virginia February 14, 1781 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, 1820 Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and President of the Constitutional Convention, 1836 Senator in the Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1836 to 1840 Died in Bowie County, Texas December 20, 1846 Mary Dandridge Ellis Wife of Richard Ellis Born in Virginia 1787 Died in Bowie County, Texas October 21, 1837 Ellis County, Texas was named for Richard Ellis Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.4 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Major William Cooke — steps away
• Robert Rankin — steps away
• William E. Collard — steps away
• William C. Crane — steps away