When Benjamin Ely was born on 25 December 1730, in West Springfield, Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America, his father, Joseph Ely, was 44 and his mother, Margaret Leonard, was 37. He married Esther Backus on 1 June 1758, in West Springfield, Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America. They were the parents of at least 4 sons and 4 daughters. He died on 25 December 1802, in West Springfield, Hampshire, Massachusetts, United States, at the age of 72, and was buried in Holyoke, Hampden, Massachusetts, United States.
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Thomas Jefferson's American Declaration of Independence endorsed by Congress. Colonies declare independence.
"""At the end of the Second Continental Congress the 13 colonies came together to petition independence from King George III. With no opposing votes, the Declaration of Independence was drafted and ready for all delegates to sign on the Fourth of July 1776. While many think the Declaration was to tell the King that they were becoming independent, its true purpose was to be a formal explanation of why the Congress voted together to declare their independence from Britain. The Declaration also is home to one of the best-known sentences in the English language, stating, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."""""""
Caused by war veteran Daniel Shays, Shays' Rebellion was to protest economic and civil rights injustices that he and other farmers were seeing after the Revolutionary War. Because of the Rebellion it opened the eyes of the governing officials that the Articles of Confederation needed a reform. The Rebellion served as a guardrail when helping reform the United States Constitution.
English: habitational name from Ely, a cathedral city on an island in the fens north of Cambridge, so named from Old English ǣl ‘eel’ + gē ‘district’.
English, French, and Breton (Finistère): from the Middle English, Old French personal name Elie, Hely (Elijah in the King James Bible); see Ellis and Elias .
English: variant of Healey .
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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