The Fearless Fifty-Nine, Richard Ellis

Richard Ellis was the 54 year old Pecan Point and vicinity representative. Ellis was a lawyer and then a judge on the Alabama Supreme Court before moving to Texas. He originally came to Texas just to collect a debt in 1826 but met Stephen F. Austin. In 1834, he moved his family and more than twenty-five slaves to Texas and established a cotton plantation. At the convention, Ellis was unanimously elected president. He held the convention together for the seventeen days needed to draft the constitution. After the convention, he became a Senator in the Texas Congress for four years. According to his obituary on the Clarksville Northern Standard, “Judge Ellis came to his death suddenly by his clothes taking fire” on December 20, 1846.