Individual Biography

George Ellis

• Formal Name:
• First Date: 1801
• Last Date: 1839
• Function: Bookbinder
• Locales: Norfolk
• Precis: Bookbinder in the Norfolk bookstore of Caleb Bonsal (040) from 1801 to 1839.
• Notes: Bookbinder
  Norfolk
  Bookbinder in the Norfolk bookstore of Caleb Bonsal (040) from 1801 to 1839.
  Ellis has a remarkably small trace in the historic and bibliographic record for someone who lived in one place for thirty-eight years. The only reference found of his trade activity is that seen in his 1839 obituary. Ellis was an English immigrant who arrived in Norfolk in 1801, bound books for Caleb Bonsal, and died in Norfolk at age sixty-seven. From the 1820 census, it appears that he never married, as he was recorded then as living with an elderly enslaved female and a free black woman with two children. No other sign of his life and work has yet been found, nor is such a find likely given his common name.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  ca.
  1772
  in England.
  
  Died:
  June 27
  1839
  in Norfolk, Virginia.
  
  
  No familial record yet found.
  
  Sources: Obituary in American Beacon (Norfolk), 28 June 1839; Federal Decennial Census, 1820; not in MESDA Index.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Caleb Bonsal

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia .