Robert Ellyson

Robert Ellyson (c. 1615/20–1671) was a legislator, lawyer, military officer, and physician who served as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses representing James City County from 1655 to 1656 and from 1660 to 1665.

[3] While a John Ellison arrived in the colony aboard the Prosperous and his wife, Ellin, on the Charitie about 1623, a familial connection to Robert Ellyson has not been verified.

[5] Ellyson initially appeared in the tax levy for Saint Mary’s Hundred, Maryland of August 2, 1642, which assessed him to pay thirty pounds of tobacco as taxation.

[1] During his residency in Virginia, Ellyson testified that he attended to Fortune Perkins when he received wounds on his arms and sides and a dislocated shoulder.

Prior to being received by Ellyson, Perkins had become the subject of an altercation in York County led by Benjamin Rucker, in which an incited multitude encouraged him by shouting "Beat out his eyes and do not let him breathe.

"[6] In 1657, Ellyson received as a bequest from his friend and fellow physician, Henry Waldron of York County, "all my Library and Books whatsoever in this country and my horse together with my chest of physicall means.

During his service as sheriff, he investigated the case of treason of Richard Ingle, who later spearheaded an uprising against Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, the proprietary colony's Catholic governor, during the Plundering Time (1644–1646).

[13] In the same year, he was selected to serve with Walter Chiles on a Virginia Governor's Council and General Assembly committee to draft plans for the construction of the third state house at Jamestown.

Ellyson and members of the committee selected a site subsequently adjoining property owned by Philip Ludwell and Robert Beverely Jr. in 1694.

"[15] To resolve a boundary dispute that had arisen on the Pocomoke River in Somerset County, Maryland, he accompanied Edmund Scarborough to consult other commissioners.

While it has been suggested that she was the daughter of Thomas Gerrard, a noted Catholic physician from Maryland, due to the first name of her eldest son, no documentation confirms that connection between the two families.

On September 28, 1671, the General Court ordered Captain George Lyall to pay a debt of 593 pounds of tobacco from Ellyson's estate to John Harloe.