Source: A History of Central and Western Texas, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago and New York, 1911, Volume 1, Pages 359-360.

William L. Ellis - Although a young man, William L. Ellis has gained the reputation of being one of the largest individual cotton buyers in Ballinger. In 1908, the banner year for that crop, Ballinger made the highest record of any town in the cotton growing states in point of the number of bales brought in by wagon and sold, the total amounting to over fity thousand bales for the year. Of this enormous crop, Mr. Ellis bought a large share. His business training and mental equipment are such as to make him an ideal factor in this vocation, involving as it does the possession of a cool head, good judgement and an unlimited amount of nerve. He has played an important part in the making of Ballinger a notable cotton market.
Mr. Ellis was born in Louisville, Winston county, Mississippi, in 1879, and when he was ten years old he came with his parents to Texas, the family locating at San Marcos in Hays county, and the son's education there including a course in the Lone Star Business College. In 1904 he came to Ballinger and embarked in the retail grocery business and prosecuted the same with success for two years, but the close confinement required by that business made it expedient for him to give it up, and it was then that he engaged in cotton buying. He married Miss Addie Thorp, of Austin, and their three children are Lucile, Jesse and Lynn.