Site of the Texas Home of Richard Ellis
New Boston, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A Virginian by birth and education - Jurist and statesman of Alabama, 1813-1825 - Came to Texas, 1825 - President of the Constitutional Convention, March 1836, and member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas - Born February 14, 1781 - Died here December 20, 1846 Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Virginia-born jurist Richard Ellis practiced law and served on the bench in Alabama before coming to Texas in 1825. In March 1836 he presided as president of the Convention that declared Texas independent from Mexico, then served in the Congress of the new Republic. He lived out his years at this Bowie County home, dying here in 1846.
Why it matters
As the man who chaired the convention that produced the Texas Declaration of Independence, Ellis stands at the founding moment of the Republic of Texas and its path toward American statehood.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1830s, the land that would become Texas was a restless borderland. It belonged, on paper, to Mexico, but it was filling rapidly with Anglo-American settlers who had come chasing cheap land — and who increasingly chafed under a distant government whose language, laws, and customs were not their own. By 1835 that friction had flared into open revolution.
Richard Ellis had arrived in this country in 1825, part of that early wave of settlers, and he came with an unusually distinguished background. Born in Virginia in 1781, educated there, he had gone on to serve as a jurist and statesman in Alabama between 1813 and 1825 before turning westward. He settled in the Red River country of far northeast Texas, a remote corner whose very ownership — Texas or the United States — was long uncertain and disputed.
Into this unsettled world came the decisive moment of Texas history. In the winter of 1835–36, as Mexican forces marched north, the settlers' representatives prepared to gather and decide, once and for all, whether Texas would remain a part of Mexico or strike out on its own.
People & events
That gathering — the Convention of 1836 — met in March at a rough settlement on the Brazos River, and the delegates chose Richard Ellis to preside over it as its president. It was a role that demanded steadiness, for the convention met under the shadow of an advancing army, with the outcome of the war still very much in doubt.
Under Ellis's gavel, the convention did the boldest thing it could: it declared Texas independent from Mexico. The delegates adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence on the second of March, 1836, and set about framing a government for the new nation they had just called into being. Ellis, the Virginia-born jurist, had chaired the founding act of the Republic of Texas.
His service did not end there. He went on to sit in the Congress of the young Republic, helping to build the institutions of the country he had helped declare. And in time he returned to the home he had made in the Red River country of what is now Bowie County, where he lived out his final years. Born in February of 1781, he died here in December of 1846 — the year Texas completed its journey into the American Union.
Its place in the American story
Every nation remembers the room where it declared itself, and for the Republic of Texas, Richard Ellis is the man who presided over that room. To chair the convention that produced the Texas Declaration of Independence is to stand at the very hinge of the state's history — the instant a rebellious province decided to become a nation.
That Republic did not last as an independent country; within a decade Texas would join the United States, adding a vast new expanse to the American map and helping set the stage for the sweeping questions of expansion that would dominate the mid-19th century. Ellis's life traces that whole arc, from a Virginia childhood in the era of the founders to a Texas homestead in the year of American statehood.
His name endures beyond this marker — a Texas county carries it — but the deeper significance is simpler. Ellis reminds us that great national beginnings are shepherded by individual people of experience and nerve, and that a lawyer from Virginia, by way of Alabama, helped preside over the founding of what is now one of the largest states in the Union.
If you visit
This marker has a distinctive look that's worth pausing over. It's a Texas Centennial marker, erected by the State of Texas in 1936 to celebrate a hundred years of independence — so instead of the familiar cast-aluminum plaque, you'll find the heavier, more monumental style of that anniversary, its inscription proclaiming Ellis's résumé in the confident language of 1936.
Remember that the words "Died here" are meant literally: the marker stands at the site of Ellis's Texas home, the place where a man who had chaired the founding convention chose to spend his last years. There is something quietly moving about that — the grand public role and the private homestead occupying the very same ground.
If you're traveling the northeast corner of Texas, this is a stop for anyone drawn to origins. Stand at the homesite of the man who presided over Texas's declaration of independence, in the disputed Red River borderland he settled, and consider how far the story ran — from a Virginian born in 1781 to the founding of a republic that would soon become part of the United States.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Richard Ellis
Related events
- · Convention of 1836
- · Texas Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bowie County
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Carved from Red River County land in December 1840 and organized the next year, Bowie County honors James Bowie, the Long Expedition veteran who died defending the Alamo. The country had been home to agricultural Indians before 1800 and was charted for Anglo-American settlement in 1819, back when it was still frontier of the fledgling Texas Republic. Its county seat wandered among DeKalb, Old Boston, Texarkana, and Boston as railroads and farming, lumber, and manufacturing took hold.
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Pecan Point Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence
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In March 1836, as Texas declared its independence from Mexico, an unusually large share of the convention's leading delegates came from Pecan Point, a Red River settlement in this corner of far Northeast Texas. Richard Ellis presided over the gathering that produced the young republic's declaration and constitution, while neighbors like Collin McKinney, A. H. Latimer, Samuel Price Carson, and Robert Hamilton helped draft the document and staff the new government. That a single frontier vicinity supplied five prominent founders speaks to how thinly settled but politically ambitious early Anglo-Texas was.