ABSTRACT
Sarah Ellis was born to Quaker parents in Philadelphia in 1721, and her father died shortly after her birth. She had no brothers or sisters. At the age of two she moved with her mother to Chesterfield, New Jersey, and her mother died when she was eighteen. 1 In the following years she may have lived for a while with her grandparents; her grandfather John Abbot and her cousin Timothy Abbot were the only family members to attend her wedding. 2 Almost all the information we have about her dates from after her marriage in September 1749 to the Quaker abolitionist John Woolman.
