Ellis, Caswell P.

 Submitted by Frances Ball Turner

History of Louisiana, by Chambers Vol. III, pg. 374 Caswell P. Ellis.

Three generations of the Ellis family have successively applied their energies and commercial talent to the cotton business at New Orleans. A cotton broker of long and enviable standing, not only in New Orleans but in other world exchanges, was the late Caswell P. Ellis, Sr., who died June 29, 1924. He was founder and head of the firm of C. P. Ellis & Company, cotton brokers.

He was born on Oakhill plantation in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, March 13, 1858, and was sixty-six years of age at the time of his death. The Ellis family is of English ancestry, and has been identified with the South since Colonial times. Caswell P. Ellis was a son of Richard M. Ellis, who before the Civil war was a cotton merchant at New Orleans, having branch houses at Grand Gulf, Rodney and Black Hawk, Mississippi.

Caswell P. Ellis lived his youth in a period marked by war and reconstruction. His education was supplied by private tutors and by the public schools of New Orleans. He was indebted for some of his training to such well known educators as Percival, Calhoun and Seaman. In 1876, at the age of eighteen, he went to work for a wholesale grocery house and in 1878 was retained to liquidate the firm. After completing this work in 1880 he became connected with the cotton firm of J. D. Peet & Company and a few years later was admitted to partnership.

Mr. Ellis in 1895 organized the cotton brokerage business of C. P. Ellis & Company, and remained its active and dynamic head for over a quarter of a century, making it known as one of the reputable houses handling cotton in all the cotton exchanges of the world. They were members of the Cotton Exchanges of New Orleans, New York and Liverpool. Mr. Ellis had many other financial connections, including the Hibernia Bank & Trust Company of New Orleans, of which he was vice president. He possessed and exemplified a fine public spirit and civic idealism, so that he gave much of his time and efforts to reform and civic movements. He was one of those who worked unceasingly to drive the Louisiana lottery from the state. He was associated with a number of civic bodies, including the carnival organizations, and was a member of the Boston and New Orleans Country Clubs.

Mr. Ellis married, February 17, 1881, Miss Nellie Mallam, of New Orleans. She and five children survived him. These children are: Caswell P., Jr.; Hazel, wife of Joseph M. Woodward, of New Orleans; Nellie, wife of John R. Murchison, of Wilmington, North Carolina; Richard Mallam, a member of the firm C. P. Ellis & Company; and Walker M., of New York. Caswell P. Ellis, Jr., was born and reared in New Orleans and for a number of years has been associated with the cotton firm of his father and succeeded to the head of that business after his father's death. The firm has its offices in the Hibernia Bank Building.