ELEANOR R. RANKINS was the oldest child of JOSEPH and JOANNA (Perkins) RANKINS. She was born May 11, 1822 in Smithfield, Maine, a daughter of Joseph Rankins and Joanna Perkins. She married ROBERT W. ELLIS in Rome, Maine on April 30, 1840. Robert was born July 31, 1821 in Smithfield, a son of JONATHAN ELLIS and MARY JANE RANKINS (no doubt a close or distant cousin of Eleanor's father). Rome is adjacent to Smithfield but is not always shown on maps. These towns are situated in the Belgrade Lakes area.

Our Maine ancestors did not live along the coast as we sometimes imagine all Mainers doing (the men out at sea and the women doing what women do everywhere: housework, taking care of the kids, and scrounging up meals); they lived inland (though there was plenty of water around), and they were farmers. The land wasn't as fertile as it was in the midwest, though, where the railroad was being built further and further west every day. Land was opening up and it was cheap - you could get lots of it, plus you could take your pick of where you wanted to live. If the place you arrived at was already filling up with people who had taken over the best land, there were plenty of other places to find just what you wanted.

Eleanor and Robert Ellis already had all of their eleven children by the time they left Maine along with Eleanor's parents and some of her brothers and sisters and their families, in about 1867, soon after the Civil War ended. Their seventh child, Helen M. Ellis, was born in 1855 (in Rome, Maine) and so she was about twelve years old when they set off for Iowa. (Less than five years later she would marry Stephen Goff in Cherokee, Iowa.)

Robert Ellis' parents stayed in Maine, but Eleanor's parents came along, and so did several of Eleanor's brothers and sisters and their own families. Surely our family has been well-represented in Cherokee County, Iowa.