The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Ellis, George Edward

ELLIS, George Edward, D. D., an American clergyman, born in Boston, Aug. 8, 1814. He graduated at Harvard college in 1833, studied theology at the Cambridge divinity school till 1836, and after a year's travel in Europe was ordained in 1840 as pastor of the Harvard church, Charlestown, Mass., and resigned Feb. 22, 1869. From 1857 to 1864 he was professor of doctrinal theology in the Cambridge divinity school. In 1864 he delivered a course of Lowell lectures on the evidences of Christianity. He wrote the lives of John Mason, Anne Hutchinson, and William Penn, in Sparks's “American Biography,” and in 1857 published a very elaborate work, “The Half Century of the Unitarian Controversy.” He edited for a time the “Christian Register,” the religious newspaper of the Massachusetts Unitarians; and for some years, in connection with the Rev. Dr. George Putnam, he conducted the “Christian Examiner.” He has published many sermons and addresses, and has contributed largely to various periodicals, most frequently upon topics of American history. He is also the author of “The Aims and Purposes of the Founders of Massachusetts” (1869), “Memoir of Jared Sparks” (1869), and “Memoirs of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford” (1871).