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Job Ellis arrived in Oswestry from Wrexham in 1853, setting up an agricultural engineering business in Leg Street. The 1861 census records him as a 51 year old engineer, employing 8 men and boys, and living in Leg Street with his wife, Jane, and daughter, Louisa.
In
1870, he built the extensive works, known as the Victoria Foundry, in
Victoria Road. According to the Border Counties Advertiser the
foundry was built using bricks made from clay cut on the
site.
A glimpse of the Victoria Foundry can be seen on the right of the picture, just behind the Victoria Rooms, which had been built in 1864.
Job had two sons, Samuel and Thomas, who both worked at the Foundry.
Samuel was married to Sophia Allmand, who came from a prominent local family. Her father, Robert, had a grocer's shop in Leg Street, her sister, Mary, ran a fancy goods repository at the Cross, her brother, Thomas, a bakery in Cross Street, and his wife, Letitia, was a milliner with a shop in Bailey Street.
Sophia died in 1877 aged 46. Samuel followed her in 1881, leaving their only surviving son, Albert Edward, Ellis, aged 8, to the care his grandfather, Job, now a widower.
In 1884 both Job and his second son, Thomas, died. What then happened to the foundry is unclear, but Thomas's two sons, Thomas Henry Ellis and George Job Ellis, set up as cycle engineers and repairers, with a shop in Salop Road. By the end of the 1890s George had left for Australia. Thomas continued at the business in Salop Road which by the time of his death in 1939 had become a flourishing motor garage .
Albert Edward Ellis must have had an unhappy childhood. He had lost first his mother, then his father, then grandfather and uncle. It is likely that he went to live with his aunt , Elizabeth WiIliams, after his grandfather's death, but neither have been found on the 1891 census.
In 1896, Albert Edward Ellis, aged 22, married Ellen Jane Roberts from Llansilin, giving his occupation on the marriage certificate as mechanic.
Ellen had an older sister, Elizabeth, who worked as a housekeeper for the Donne family, and it was probably whilst on a visit to her sister that Ellen met Albert. Ellen and Elizabeth are pictured on the right. c.1893.
There is a staff photograph, taken in 1909, of the Cambrian Railways Works at Oswestry, which shows Albert Edward Ellis, one of turning shop men. (The photograph is held at the Public Record Office).
Albert Edward and Ellen Jane Ellis made their home at, "Appam", no.2 Ferrers Street, and there raised 8 children.
Their 3rd son, Frederick Oswald Ellis, joined the 2nd battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and was killed at the fourth and last battle of Ypres on 29th September 1918, aged 19.
His name is recorded on the Memorial to the Missing at Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium, and also on the gates of Cae Glas Park in Oswestry (twice in fact - once as F.O. Ellis and again as Frederick Oswald Ellis).
Albert Ernest Ellis was the second son. He was apprenticed at age 12 to Anderson's, the bootmaker, at The Cross. He later transferred to Morris & Jones, the grocer next door.
Here pictured in the doorway of Morris & Jones second from right.
A precocious lad, he took himself off to Manchester at the age of 14 to work first for the Home & Colonial and then the Manchester Coop.
When war was declared on 4th August 1914, Albert Ernest, was only just 17, but he was over 6 ft tall and easily taken for 18 by recruitment officers who did not ask questions and who were, no doubt, themselves swept up in the great enthusiasm for war. He joined the Manchester Regiment - the 5th Manchesters and served in France and Egypt. He was shot on 6th November 1918.
When he recovered consciousness 2 weeks later at Nettley Abbey Hospital, Southampton, the war was over. He went back to work at the Manchester Coop, and there through a mutual friend met Alice Amy Sewell. They were married in 1923.
Albert Ernest Ellis and his grandchildren on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1977.
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