Bannock County
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One of the old heroic band of pioneers who bravely dared all the perils
of savage life, the deprivations and hardships incident to the early
days in California, Montana, and other portions of the Great West in the
time when placer mining for gold was the chief industry to be pursued,
W. H. Ellison is now pleasantly located on a productive ranch of 160
acres, one mile west and three miles south of the thriving, inchoate
city of Rigby, Fremont county, Idaho. He was born on October 16. 1837,
in Monroe county, then Virginia, but now by the segregation of the
western half of the state falling under the designation of West
Virginia. He is the son of Joseph and Jane (Garvin) Ellison, natives of
Virginia, both of them dying within six weeks of each other in 1855, the
father aged sixty-six years and the mother sixty-five.
W. H.
Ellison was but eighteen years old when the exigencies of life forced
him to commence life for himself and he continued the management of the
family homestead for two years. Then coming to Iowa, he attended school
for eighteen months, then returning to West Virginia to close up the
affairs of his father's estate, thereafter going to Kansas and searching
for good investment properties, purchasing some fine farming land and
during the five years of his residence in that state he disposed of a
portion of it at remunerative prices.
In 1862 he went to
California as a goldminer, traversing the plains with ox teams at a time
when the Indians were extremely hostile, and to ensure safety four of
the trains, 113 wagons, joined in one caravan. One train of thirteen
wagons became dissatisfied with some of the arrangements and started on
in advance of the others, the result being that they were attacked by
Indians and had it not been for the timely aid of the companions they
had forsaken they would all have perished. Everything but the stock was
rescued, however, and a posse of forty men started to recover that, but
they were driven back by the Indians with a loss of five men, only two
being recovered, one of whom named Lieper, was scalped, and over his
head Mr. Ellison tied a silk handkerchief so as to conceal the fact from
Lieper's sister, the only female member of his party.
Mr.
Ellison's California trip did not prove profitable and when in 1863 the
celebrated John Day mines were discovered in Oregon he and a partner
started overland for the hew fields with pack broncos, enduring many
severe hardships on their six-weeks journey. For three years Mr. Ellison
remained at Canyon, Ore., in 1865 going on an unsuccessful trip to West
Bannock and three weeks later started for Montana, but hearing
discouraging reports from people coming from that territory, he turned
back and wintered in Salt Lake City, the next spring, however, going to
Montana, where he engaged in freighting operations from Fort Benton to
the mining camps and other points of the state for over two years.
Returning then to Utah, he was connected with quartz mining in the Big
Cottonwood region for several years with gratifying results, so that he
purchased two ranches in different places, each containing 160 acres.
Later selling his ranches, in 1888 he came to Bannock county, Idaho, in
that then undeveloped section, securing a desert claim of 320 acres, a
pre-emption claim of 160 acres, adding to his estate 160 acres more by
purchase. Here he conducted farming and stock-raising successfully, but
he has since sold all but 160 acres of this property.
Mr.
Ellison became a citizen of Fremont county in 1901, purchasing the
quarter section of productive land on which he now resides, lying two
miles west and three miles south of Rigby, which is his postoffice
address. On this fertile property Mr. Ellison is developing one of the
most attractive homes of the Upper Valley. He is considered a model
citizen, whose broad-minded liberality and charity is never checked, all
matters of public improvement or private beneficence being alike the
recipients of his aid and assistance, his cordiality being noteworthy
and his hospitality that of the typical "old-timer," whose latch-string
always hangs out.
Mr. Ellison married, first, with Miss Eliza
Sparks Newell, at Salt Lake City, on November 23, 1877. She was born on
March 29, 1840, at Middlesex, England, the daughter of Samuel G. and
Anna E. (Zarn) Newell, her father dying but a few months after her
birth, in August, 1840, the mother surviving until she too died in July,
1861. Three children came by this marriage to Mr. Ellison, Priscilla E.,
Abraham (deceased), and Alice C. By a second marriage Mr. Ellison became
father to two children, John W., born on August 13, 1879, and Jane G.,
born on March 10, 1881.
Extracted from Progressive Men of Bannock, Bear Lake, Bingham, Fremont and Oneida Counties, Idaho, published in 1904, pages 644-645, contributed 2021 Jun 15 by Norma Hass
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