Family Tree Maker - Nathan, Amy, Madison and Ethan Berga

Ellison Family History
New York from Ontario Province. It is here that the Lower Peninsula of Ontario extends south;
surrounded by the United States, with Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario which feeds Lake Erie
through Niagara Falls. From here, Joseph would have to travel west, across the peninsula by land
where records have him living on the Georgian Bay. One source has Joseph living in and around
Clarkton and Sault Saint Marie on the edge of Lake Michigan. Other sources place him in nearby
Grey District, Collingwood Township, in the villages of Thornbury and Clarksburg. Joseph
married Canadian, Mary Cummings about 1857. Mary was born July 1831 in Canada to a
Scotsman by the name of Mr. J. Cummings and a Canadian born mother who’s maiden name was
McDonald. Mary was Protestant and belonged to the Presbyterian Church, while Joseph
belonged to the Anglican Church of England. “Although their churches were only a couple blocks
apart; they each attended their own church, even after their marriage.” Together they had eight
children, born in Canada; of the eight, only six survived to make the journey west: Mary
Elizabeth, James, Robert, David, Albert, and Norman.
Hearing much of the wealth, and rapid development of the Puget Sound region, Joseph knew
there would be better opportunities for his children than were to be obtained in their native place.
It is said that a severe storm took the roof off the Ellison’s home, prompting them to finally
migrate to the Pacific Northwest, where their oldest son, James, worked in the logging camps in
Washington. By 1872 the continental railroad had reached San Francisco. Selling their property
and packing their belongings, the Ellisons boarded the train from Chicago headed for San
Francisco. From California, the Ellisons took a steam ship to Seattle. Their trip not yet complete;
all the furniture and baggage was put onto a smaller boat as they continued to the very southern
most tip of Puget Sound. These small supply boats were known as "Mosquito Fleets." They were
small and swallow and could run halfway up onto the landings. According to Norman Ellison and
told to Robert’s granddaughter Diane, James met the family at Hardscrabble Hill on the upper
arm of Oyster Bay with a borrowed team and wagon; they set to packing the wagon and wearily
continued towards their new home in the Kamilche Valley. Mary's brother, William Cummings
and his wife Harriet Amanda and seven children, homesteaded nearby. In later years, Tony Ellison
would remember the "ol’ Cummings’ place" with a clearing and a home near the old nut tree.
Joseph homesteaded a wooded acreage across the Simpson railroad track. His first homestead
was a log cabin with stone chimney. The remnants of a standing chimney still remain to this day
on land that is now owned by McDonald. Joseph would swap land with his neighbor, Moody.
The Kelly’s lived on the down the road, while the _______squatted on the land between
Moody’s Place and the Ellisons. A group of Chinese, who had come in with the railroad laborers,
laying the tracks that, would replace the timber skids, lived in a shanty by the swatters. That very
year, Joseph filed his first papers with the intent to become a citizen of the United States,
renouncing his allegiance to Queen Victoria. The railroad, which ended at the bay in the old town
of Kamilche, and the hotel, cut through the Ellison’s land. In later years, Albert would clear land
used for the road to Kamilche. It is along this same path that the Kamilche highway runs today;
cutting a line between the Ellisons and the o’l Cummings’ place, where there remains a single nut
tree.
Mary Elizabeth Ellison was born October 13, 1859 in Thornbury, Ontario, Canada. She married
Francis Carr of England, September 20, 1878 in Thornbury, Collingwood Township, Ontario.
Frank was the son of John and Mary Carr of England and at the time of his marriage, he was 26
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