Richard Ellis (politician)

Richard Ellis (1781 - December 20, 1846) was an American plantation owner, politician, and judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Alabama. He was president of the Convention of 1836 that declared Texas's independence of Mexico, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, and later served in the Republic of Texas legislature.

Ellis was born and raised in Virginia, but he settled in Alabama. He was a member of Alabama’s Constitutional Convention in 1818 and an Associate Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court (1819-1826).

Ellis resettled in Mexican Texas in 1834, establishing a plantation in what is now Bowie County. In 1836 he was unanimously elected president of the Texas constitutional convention that declared independence on March 2, 1836. He also held the convention together for the additional seventeen days needed to draft Texas's constitution. He then served the Republic of Texas as a Senator from 1836 to 1840 in the first four congresses.

Richard died in Bowie County in 1846, but in 1929 he and his wife Mary West Dandrige were reinterred in the State Cemetery at Austin, Texas.

Ellis County, Texas, is named in his honor.

Illicit affairs with his slaves fostered 6 children, whose descendants have lobbied for acknowledgment from the white family since the 1960s, to no avail.

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