Mary Gordon Ellis

Mary Gordon Ellis (April 21, 1889 – September 9, 1934) was an educator and politician from South Carolina. She became the first woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature with her election to the South Carolina State Senate in 1928.

Mary Gordon was born to Alexander M. Gordon and Mary Gamble Gordon, Sr. in the small community of Gourdin, near Kingstree; of Scotch-Irish descent, she was one of ten children. When she was small, the family moved into Kingstree, where she grew up, graduating from Kingstree High School in 1909. Already as a child she evinced an interest in politics, hanging around the steps of the county courthouse while listening to legal discussions, and sometimes sneaking inside to watch the court proceedings. Upon graduating from high school Ellis taught locally for one year before heading to Winthrop College in Rock Hill for further study. There she graduated in 1913 after working part-time to pay for her education, which was also funded with scholarship money; she had taken a sabbatical due to poor health in 1912, during which she had continued to teach. She then moved south to Jasper County, near the border with Georgia, to serve as teacher and principal at a school in the town of Gillisonville; she was the only female college graduate in the county, and the first teacher there with a college degree.

In 1914 Ellis married Junius Gather Ellis, a farmer and turpentine operator who was relatively affluent for the area; with him she would have three children, Mary Elizabeth, Margaret Lee, and Junius Gather. The family lived at Ellis's home, Stockholm, located between Gillisonville and Coosawhatchie. She continued to teach, unusual for a married woman at the time; she and her husband hired a tutor to help educate their children so that she could work. She also assisted in running her husband's businesses. So alarmed were the couple at the poor state of local schools that when their eldest child was ready to begin her formal education, they sent her to live with relatives in Savannah to take advantage of the better schools there; her siblings soon followed. Ellis further invited her sisters, students at Winthrop, to come and live with her during the summer and tutor local students to improve their education. One of their pupils went on to run the theological program at Duke University, while another took a high position at Clemson University.

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