Elizabeth Ellis was the ninth of eleven children. Her eldest sister was only sixteen when Elizabeth was born, so it would be very likely that all her four sisters and four brothers were still at home. Elizabeth was baptised at the non-conformist chapel in Morley, Yorkshire.
Her grandparents were Quakers but it seems her father had taken a slightly different path and brought up his children in another of the many Christian denominations that flourished in the 19th century West Riding.
Elizabeth herself would marry in the (Church of England) Parish Church of Leeds at the age of sixteen. Her husband John was a cloth worker, variously described as a cloth miller, carder or slubber. They settled at New Road Side in Horsforth where there was a thriving woollen industry.
In the 1841 census the family have a fifteen-year-old Mary Ellis living with them. Her occupation is “servant” and I wonder if she was actually their servant or, more likely, a relative working as a servant elsewhere. She might have been visiting on her night off.
We know Elizabeth gave birth to six children, three boys and three girls. The youngest, Samuel, was born in 1851, and I have a sad feeling that neither he nor his mother long survived the birth. He is not recorded on the 1861 census and John Clark is a widower.
Mother of Joe Clark and daughter of George and Sarah Ellis
Born in Gildersome on 24 October 1819 and baptised on 30 December 1819
Married John Clark on 13 March 1836
No record of burial found but died sometime between 1851-1861