Merchant, politician.
Born at London, England in September 1783, second son of Alexander Ellice (c1743-1805) and Ann Russell (?-?), he attended Winchester and graduated from Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1800. He became head of the family business, which was international but based in North America, upon his father’s death. He was known as “Bear” or “The Bear”.
Like his father, who was involved in the chattel slave trade in North America and the West Indies, Ellice had significant and long-term business interests in a number of West Indian sugar and slave plantations. Over his lifetime, he owned hundreds of enslaved workers who he used as unfree labour in these plantations.
Because one of his firms (Phyn, Ellice and Company) was a principal London agent and supplier of the North West Company, Ellice tried in 1804 to buy out the Hudson's Bay Company. When he was unsuccessful he pressed for the amalgamation of the two fur companies, which was finally achieved in 1821. He was the lone major figure of the NWC who remained active in the affairs of the new HBC.
He had connections in high corners of the government—his first wife was Lady Hannah Althea Grey (?-?), sister of Earl Grey—which he used to benefit the HBC over the years in a variety of ways. It was his interest that helped protect the HBC in the parliamentary inquiry of 1857. He sold out with the transfer of the Company to Edward Watkin’s people in 1863. His second wife was Lady Anne Amelia Keppel (1803-1844) who died in childbirth.
Ellice was the author of The Communications of Mercator, upon the Contest between the Earl of Selkirk, and the Hudson’s Bay Company, on One Side, and the North West Company, on the Other (1817) and Continuation of the Communications of Mercator (1817). Letters from Prosper Mérimée to him (1857-63) were published as Lettres à Edward Ellice, ed. Marianne Carmalhan (1963).
He died at Glen Quoich, Scotland on 17 September 1863. He is commemorated by Ellice Avenue in Winnipeg, the Fort Ellice fur trade post in western Manitoba, and the Rural Municipality of Ellice in Manitoba.
See also:
Edward Ellice, Dictionary of Canadian Biography IX, 233-39.
Rt. Hon. Edward Ellice, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
Lady Anne Amelia Keppel, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery
We thank Anne Lindsay for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 9 September 2024
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