Robert Ellis, Sr.

Robert Stephen Ellis, Sr. (June 20, 1871 – July 24, 1945), was a businessman and lawyer from Amite, the seat of government for Tangipahoa Parish in southeastern Louisiana.

A son of Thomas Cargill Warner Ellis and the former Martina Virginia Hamilton, Ellis was educated at Staunton Military Academy in Staunton,Virginia, Centenary College, then in Jackson, Louisiana, but later relocated to Shreveport, and Tulane University in New Orleans. He was admitted to the state bar in 1894, then practiced for two years in New Orleans before he returned to his native Amite. A Democrat, he was elected district attorney, a position that he filled from 1900 to 1908, when he resigned to become judge of the 21st Judicial District Court, then consisting of St. Helena and Livingston parishes, as well as his own Tangipahoa. he was judge for four terms. During World War I, he was chairman of the Tangipahoa Legal Advisory Board. In 1922, he ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana Supreme Court.^[1] 

In 1896, Ellis married the former Maud Sands Addision (1871-1960), the daughter of May Dunbar and Henry Sands Addison of Amite.^[2] Their children were Robert Ellis, Jr., also a DA and judge, and Lloyd, Martina, Maud, Heloise, and May. Ellis was an Episcopalian church steward and a member of the Masonic lodge and Knights Templar, and Sons of Confederate Veterans. He died at the age of seventy-four and is interred at the Ellis family graveyard in Roseland in Tangipahoa Parish.^[1]

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