This was given to me by a cousin. It was probably written by one of Ellis’ children for a school writing assignment. I date it as about 1925. I have retyped it here as the original was very difficult to read. Grammar and spelling have been copied as they were on the original. The original copy can be viewed under Newspaper Articles section 1929 and before.
Ellis H. Parker was born at Wrightstown, NJ, now better known as Camp Dix on Sept. 12, 1871. He is the son of Anthony J. Parker whose forefather Marcus Parker was killed in the battle of Monmouth at the time of the revolutionary war. He was raised on a farm. In early life took up the study of music and for a few years played a violin for dances. Then he was selected by the Burlington, Monmouth and Ocean County pursuing society, to act as one of the pusuers in the detection of horse thieves. Prior to this, he suffered being robbed a couple of times and these he solved himself. He had good luck in catching horse thieves and on April 4, 1894 he was called to Mt. Holly by the prosecutor Eckard B. Budd to act as county detective for the county of Burlington. In those days he was paid under the fee system. It is said that Mr. Budd never questioned ay bill of his where he made good but would not allow him anything where he failed. This probably is the cause of him being successful; although he says that a good wife and a contented mind is responsible for his success. He served 6 years under Mr. Budd and then 15 years under Mr. Samuel A. Atkinson and nearly 10 years under Jonathan H. Kelsey. During this time he has handled every class of crime on the statute book. He has had 103 murder cases - 96 convictions and 1 case pending. He has shown that he can work cases in other counties as well as his own - the David Paul murder case in Camden, the bank messenger, was traced down by him and two persons paid the death penalty. This case attracted world wide attention and is only one of the many mystery cases that he solved.
He also had the William Giberson murder case in Ocean County, whose wife, Ivy is now serving a life sentence.
About one year ago he was called by the Attorney General of NJ, Thomas McCran to work on a case in Morris County, NJ. He located his man in St. Louis. MO and he was convicted. He was again called to work in one of the upper counties in another investigation which is still in progress.
No case that he has ever had has been too big for him to handle. He has shown that he can direct work as well as do it himself, although he makes no specialty of any crime. Burlington County this year will be richer by many thousand dollars through his efforts of enforcing the Hobard act.
He has had many fluttering offers but has refused preferring to stay in NJ. He not only is locally known but is nationally known in his work and can get assistance from all police departments and through government channels.
He is a married man with a large family which he is very much devoted to.