Four confirmed primary documents from the man who watched every face at the signing. The early letters to Governor Cooke. Nine years in Congress. The burning of his home. Thirty years as Customs Collector for five presidents.
William Ellery was born in Newport, Rhode Island on December 22, 1727, the second son of a prosperous merchant. He graduated from Harvard in 1747 and spent the next two decades searching for his calling, merchant, customs collector, clerk of the court, before passing the bar in 1770 at age forty-three. In 1776, Rhode Island sent him to the Continental Congress to fill the seat of Samuel Ward, who had died of smallpox. Ellery arrived in Philadelphia on May 14, 1776, with independence still six weeks away.
The Rhode Island Historical Society holds the principal collection of Ellery papers, roughly five to six hundred documents spread across sixteen collections, including letter books from his congressional years and his long tenure as Customs Collector for Newport. His general correspondence to Governor Nicholas Cooke, June 21, 1776, written one week after arriving in Philadelphia, is at the LOC House Archives.
We have lived to see a Period which a few years ago no human forecast could have imagined — to see these Colonies shake off and declare themselves independent of a State which they once gloried to call Parent.
On August 2, 1776, the engrossed parchment Declaration was brought out for signing. Ellery had arrived only weeks before the independence vote. He positioned himself beside Secretary Charles Thomson so he could watch each delegate's face as they signed. His letter books at the Rhode Island Historical Society contain his account of the day, that he saw resolution, not fear, on every face.
He signed. His home in Newport was occupied and burned by the British during their occupation of Rhode Island from December 1776 through October 1779. When the British left, there was nothing to return to.
Ellery served in the Continental Congress longer than almost any other member, nine years, interrupted only by the years 1780 and 1782 when Rhode Island did not return him. He developed a specialization in naval affairs, serving on the Marine Committee and later on the Board of Admiralty. The Marine Committee's sailing orders of December 10, 1776, signed by Ellery and four other Declaration signers, are documented at Founders Online.
He rode on horseback from Newport to Congress sessions rather than travel by carriage, to save money. By the time he left Congress in 1785 he had substantially depleted his personal finances in the service of the nation.
His joint letter with Madison to the Committee of Congress at Washington's Headquarters, dated May 5, 1780, is at Founders Online in the Madison Papers: founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-02-02-0017.
After leaving Congress, Ellery served as Commissioner of the Continental Loan Office, then in 1790 was appointed Customs Collector for the Port of Newport by President Washington, a post he held for thirty years, serving under five presidents, until his death in 1820. He was one of only three signers who lived into their nineties, alongside John Adams and Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
He died on February 15, 1820, at the age of ninety-two. Among his grandchildren were William Ellery Channing, the influential Unitarian theologian, and Richard Henry Dana Sr., the poet and essayist.