James Elias Ellison was born in 1820 on the New River Ridge farm of James Isaac III and Mary "Polly" Callaway Ellison near the Farley Meetinghouse in what became West Virginia as the youngest of their 14 children. When he was about 9, his family moved to Sandlick in the coal marsh area of what became Raleigh County in 1850. He was baptized as a charter member of the Glen Daniel Coal Marsh Baptist Church in 1834 the year his father died and then his mother died in late 1835. James then worked for his brother Matthew in the Coal Marsh area and then moved to Boone County, where he worked in his brother Amos' saw and grist mills, took subscription courses and then taught school for three months. While teaching, he boarded with the James Mitchell family and fell in love with their daughter Sarah. The 17 year old school teacher had 10 cents and his 18 year old bride had 12.5 when her father married them March 21, 1837, probably in the Olive Branch Baptist Church where Mitchell was its 2nd preacher. Their first year of marriage they lived in a two room house that they built and worked for her father for $10/month and board. They then rented a nearby farm until 1849, where Sarah bore him the first 6 of their 11 children. He was licensed to preach in the Olive Branch Church in 1842 and was their 6th preacher. Around 1848 he was ordained in the Forks of Coal Baptist Church and then in order for him to preach, they moved to Elk River in 1849, Slaughter's Creek in 1851 and then a farm south of Charleston in 1853 so he could preach at the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. Sarah bore him 5 more children, while James traveled to preach and helped organize the Lily Creek Church in Orestes, Madison Co., Indiana in 1858. He then arranged to move there, which he later wrote in his autobiography was "The best day's work I ever did for my family". The family then moved from what is now West Virginia to Madison County, Indiana in 1860. They traveled down the Kanawha River on Captain Snelling Farley's "Ellen Gray" stern wheel steamboat, past Point Pleasant where James Elias' gr-grandfather Francis Farley Jr. and grandfather James Ellison II had helped defeat Chief Cornstalk in 1774 and then on down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. From there they probably traveled on the Cincinnati to Chicago Railroad, which was completed to Anderson, Indiana in 1857. James then continued to farm and traveled as a Baptist preacher helping to start several churches. After Sarah died in 1882, he took a 4 month trip to West Virginia to visit old friends and family and preach wherever he could. Then he began writing a series of religious poems and a book "The City of Living Soul, Discovered in a Dream", which was published in 1887. This book includes his autobiography, which tells of his preaching in 60+ churches in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and includes the picture of James above. He then married his 2nd wife Nancy C. in 1889 and she died about 1905. James then died on Jan. 07, 1907, while living with his daughter Evaline in Anderson, Indiana.