Ellis joined the California gold rush and he went to Nevada City, California, and tried to set up shop as a retail salesman, a prospector and lawyer. In 1851 he was elected to the California State Assembly, where one of the resolutions he sponsored granted women the right to own property in the state of California. Ellis returned to Felicity, where in 1852, he and Lucy had the first of their children, Clara Blanche Ellis Starr, who would go on in her own right as a social leader of the city of Rockford, Illinois.