Welcome

Harold Raymond Dixon, my paternal grandfather, turns out to have descended from a long line of Quakers. They migrated from Ireland to Delaware, then North Carolina, then Ohio. As they emigrated every two to three generations they moved westward through Indiana and Illinois, with Harold eventually moving across the Mississippi River into southeast Iowa.

At this point, the story begins when William Dixon and his two sisters, Rose and Dinah, appeared in the southern part of Penn’s Colony, now northern Delaware, in 1689. These siblings have somewhat murky origins that have greatly resisted attempts to prove or disprove them. The assumption has always been that they came from the Lurgan Monthly Meeting in County Armagh in northern  Ireland, and their connections in the Newark Monthly Meeting to the Hollingsworth and Harlan families provides correlation.

From each of these siblings thousands of descendants populated the colonies long before the revolution produced a nation. My Dixon line migrated down the King’s Highway to Fredericksburg, Virginia, then took either the Fall Line Road or the Upper Road into the Piedmont regions of North Carolina in the mid-1750’s. They later migrated to the new Northwest Territory to what is now south-central Ohio in the early 1800’s.

Many Dixons and Mendenhalls (through Rose) and Harlans (through Dinah) stayed in the general vicinity of Philadelphia, but many also migrated through the colonies, then later the states.

Flossie May Stanley’s ancestors

David Theoscar Peterson’s ancestors

My maternal grandmother, Celia Lorena Ellis, was born near Shelby, North Carolina on Feb. 20, 1905. Her appearance in the first two census’ of her life were both in a part of Township 3 referred to as ‘Rippys’, so she may have been born there. The whole township is just south of Shelby, and includes Earl and Patterson Springs. Rippys is more of a substitute name for Township 3, probably named so due to the many Rippy/Rippey families in the area.

Lorena (she went by her middle name) had a grandfather Zenas Alonzo Ellis who married a Hannah Rippey. One of Zenas’ sons, her uncle William E. Ellis, and Zenas’ older brother John Rickman Ellis all lived near each other, served by the Swangs Post Office. This facility was later renamed to Patterson Springs.

Lorena’s father, Joseph Briscoe Ellis, presumably lived either in an existing Ellis house or a newer house built nearby. Unfortunately census records from 1910 don’t have any geographic markers. Best guess is somewhere near Zenas Alonzo Ellis‘ house.

Zenas Alonzo Ellis‘ father was Benjamin James Ellis who married Mary Polly Hopper (his first cousin). Zenas’ older brothers Charles Heberton Ellis and John Rickman Ellis built the Ellis bridge using around 80 slaves, right before the Civil War (that’s the story, although uncorroborated). After the war, and after a flood washed out the bridge, they started what became known as the Ellis Ferry which served the route between Gaffney, South Carolina and Shelby, North Carolina.

Benjamin Ellis‘ father was James R. Ellis, Sr., who married Margaret Peggy Hopper. James was the original settler in the area shortly after the American Revolution, at one point owning over 400 acres, which was most of the land between Shelby and Buffalo Creek.