John Ellis (d. November 12, 1808) was a planter and public official in British and Spanish colonial Mississippi and in Mississippi Territory, United States. He was appointed by U.S. president John Adams to the Mississippi legislative council, upper house of the first territorial general assembly, and was elected council president. He later served as speaker of the lower house of the Mississippi territorial assembly.
John Ellis was a son of early settler Richard Ellis.
According to historian Ethan A. Grant:
In February 1785, John Ellis was named a justice of the peace for the ultimately short-lived jurisdiction of Bourbon County, Georgia, along with Nicholas Long, William Davenport, Nathaniel Christmas, Tacitus Gaillard, Sutton Banks, William McIntosh, Benjamin Farar, Cato West, Thomas Marston Green, William Anderson, and Adam Bingaman. In 1787 Ellis and his enslaved farm laborers grew of tobacco, the top yield in the region.
When the Mississippi Territory was organized in 1798, John Ellis was named a captain of foot in the first territorial militia organized by Winthrop Sargent, and later was commissioned a major. In 1800 deed records show that Ellis bought an plantation on the Homochitto River from Jesse Carter for . The same year he paid Joseph Panill for at Bayou Sara near Baton Rouge.
Ellis was appointed to the territorial legislative council on December 23, 1800 by President Adams. According to a public letter written by former Army officer James Sterrett, around 1800 or 1801 General Wilkinson embezzled public money to buy slaves from a Mr. Jones in Maryland; the slaves were bought on credit by John Ellis, Richard Butler, and others, while "the notes" were held by Abijah Hunt.
He served on the Mississippi territorial legislative council from 1800 to 1803. William Dunbar of Forest plantation wrote to him in his capacity as president of the council in 1802 to advise that "there is no law to authorize that slaves, running away from Spanish territory and taking refuge in free United States Northwest territory, be returned to their owners; fears that the Spanish could retaliate by adopting the same policy to the great harm of the Mississippi Territory and Louisiana; suggests remedy by law." In 1806, Mississippi militia officer John F. Carmichael was court-martialed for disobedience and contemptuous treatment of orders for failing to deliver rifles to John Ellis as dictated by a commanding officer.
He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives of Mississippi Territory from 1806 to 1808. In 1808, Ellis and Joshua Baker, President of the Mississippi Territory Legislative Council signed off a resolution passed by the legislature requesting that territorial representative George Poindexter seek the impeachment of territorial judge Peter Bryan Bruin due to his alleged habitual drunkenness.
Ellis died in Mississippi in November 1808.
On December 31, 1799, John Ellis married Sarah Piercy at Natchez. Sarah was the daughter of Charles Percy, a retired British naval officer and Bayou Sara planter.
Ellis was a brother-in-law of Benjamin Farar Jr. who married his sister Mary and Stephen Minor who married his sister Martha. Stephen Duncan was his nephew-in-law by way of marriage to his brother Abram Ellis' daughter Margaret Ellis.