In his grandfather's will of 1772 his father George was bequethed £100 and "The East Dwelling house in Bellerby late in the possession of Thomas Thompson with the Turfhouse [?] Shop and other appertainces therewith occupied (the West end with the appertainces now being in the possession of ...... Scott) and also my share or allotment upon Bellerby Moor or Common containing by .... four acres until his son John shall attain the age of 25."
Therefore by 1793 John would have presumably inherited his grandfather's estates. In or around 1795 John migrated to India - according to the 1857 letter "John went to India under the auspices of Charles Grant, Esquire (afterwards Lord Glenelg)".
John was married three time. Nothing is known of his first wife Ms Bewley. According to the East India Register and the India Office FHS a "Mrs Ann Ellerton, wife of John Ellerton, died on 7th October 1809 aged 25 years ... buried at South Park St, Calcutta ... late of Maldah" - this presumably related to his second wife (nee Gunn) who he had married just 9 months previously. It is possible that she was the daughter of a "William Gunn, Indigo Planter" who died on 23/7/1808 (East India Register), but this has yet to be confirmed.
His marriage to his third wife, Hannah, in 1818 was followed just two years later by his death, aged 52, in 1820. Hannah, born 30/5/1772, was the widow of William Myers (died in Bengal 19/1/1817) who she married in 1787 when she was just 15; daughter of William and Elizabeth Ayres, and half-sister of Mary Jackson - the author of the Jackson Diary. The 1857 letter stated that John's "third wife had one daughter by her first marriage to Dr Corrie, afterwards Bishop of Madras" - but this almost certainly refers to Hannah's daughter (Elizabeth 1789-1836, who married Rev. Daniel Corrie in 1812, Bengal) by her first marriage to William Myers. According to the book Daniel Corrie His Family and Friends in 1855 Hannah was living with John Jackson, a son of the author of the Jackson Diary, in Calcutta. [per researcher Rob Darlington]. Five diaries written by Hannah, recording her "social life and involvement in running schools in Calcutta" between 1843 and 1856, are held at the British Library.
Further information on John and Hannah is provided in The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary by George Smith: "Corrie married the daughter of Mrs.Ellerton.....It was Mr.Ellerton who, when an indigo-planter at Malda, opened the first Bengali school, and made the first attempt at translating the Bible into that vernacular. His young wife, early made a widow [of William Myers], .....Fifty years afterwards, not long before her death at eighty-seven.....".
A notice in the The Morning Chronicle (London) of 6th March 1858 reported: "At Calcutta on 20th of January (in the Bishop's Palace), Hannah Ellerton, widow of the late John Ellerton Esq. of Maldah, at the advanced age of 86 (of which 79 had been passed in India), respected by all who knew her, and beloved by the orphan girls of the European soldier, to whose welfare she had devoted herself for more than fifty years".
The Bengal Wills Index records Hannah's name name in 1858, and according to Bengal Past & Present (1925) Hannah was buried at "South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata".
Numerous references were made to "Mr Ellerton of Guyamati" who managed 17 factories cultivating indigo in the district of Puraniya in The History, Antiquities, Topography, and Statistics of Eastern India (Robert Montgomery Martin, 1838).
The 1924 publication "Ellerton" (by John's great-grandson William Mouat-Keith Ellerton of Palmers Green, London) also states that John translated the New Testament into the Bengali language while in India - a printed copy of John's work is held in the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, London.
Page last updated: March 2008
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