After buying his own freedom when he was 26, a few years later Ellison purchased his wife and their children, to protect them from sales as slaves.
The Act of 1820 made it more difficult for slaveholders to make personal manumissions, but Ellison gained freedom for his sons and a quasi-freedom for his surviving daughter.
During the American Civil War, Ellison and his sons supported the Confederate States of America and gave the government substantial donations and aid.
William Ellison Jr. was named "April" by his master when born into slavery about 1790 on a plantation near Winnsboro, South Carolina.
Hundreds of thousands of new settlers were attracted to the region, and they created pressure for the federal government to conduct Indian removal throughout the Southeast and what became known as the Deep South.
It was common practice, according to Black Codes of South Carolina and Louisiana, to pay slaves for any labor performed on Sunday.
[2][3] April continued to learn the variety of complex skills related to cotton-gin making and repair.
[5] Note: These are documented as two different women, as Ellison bequeathed Maria money in his will of 1861 (see below), but Mary had already died by then.)
According to the 1800 law, five freemen had to appear with his master in court to attest to April's ability to support himself in freedom.
Purchasing them from slaveholders was one step, but under the 1800 law, other free men had to certify that the slave could support himself in freedom.
In hard times, property, including slaves, could be confiscated or put up for forced sale to settle debts of an individual.
[9] After purchasing his daughter Maria from her owner (as she had been born while her mother was still enslaved), Ellison set up a trust with a friend in 1830 to have legal title transferred to him for one dollar.
Col. William McCreighton nominally "owned" Maria, but the trust provided for her to live with her father, who could free her if the laws changed to make it easier to achieve.
In the 1850 census, Maria Ellison Jacobs was listed as a free woman of color, although no legal document supported that.
[10] After gaining his freedom in 1817, Ellison moved to Sumter County, South Carolina, in the High Hills of Santee, where he established himself as a cotton gin maker.
[5] Based on transcriptions of the gravestones, his wife and three generations of descendants, including his sons and their wives, were buried on this property.
On March 27, 1863, John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery.