Jonathan Ellis

Jonathan D. Ellis (d. 1845) and his wife were appointed as BMS missionaries to India in 1831. He came out of the church at Maze Pond, Southwark, having been trained as a printer before arriving in India. He worked initially at Chitpore, superintending the men’s department of the Native Christian Boarding School, while Mrs. Ellis worked with the women. Ellis soon organized a small church, but poor health forced him to remove to Howrah in 1838. The Ellis’s moved again late in 1838, this time to Intally. In March 1841, Mrs. Ellis returned to England, with her husband following her that June. When he arrived in England, he learned that his youngest child had died at sea and that his wife had just died in Exeter. Devastated, he retired to Exeter to regain his health, remarrying briefly before his death on 9 February 1845. During his final illness in 1843-1844, the BMS paid his medical bills, including £185 Ellis requested for 1844. See W. H. Carey, Oriental Christian Biography, Containing Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Christians who have Lived and Died in the East, 3 vols. (Calcutta: J. Thomas, Baptist Mission House, 1852), 3:78-79; E. Daniel Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 246; BMS Committee Minutes, Vol. I (January 1843-May 1844), ff. 174-175.