Theodore Gordon Ellyson (27 February 1885–27 February 1928), naval aviation pioneer, was born in Richmond and was the son of Henry Theodore Ellyson and Elizabeth M. "Lizzie" Walker Ellyson. His grandfather Henry Keeling Ellyson was a Baptist lay leader who served briefly as mayor of Richmond, his uncle William Ellyson was also a prominent Baptist lay leader in Virginia, and another uncle, James Taylor Ellyson, was lieutenant governor of Virginia. At age fifteen Ellyson rode the train to Annapolis, Maryland, in hopes of attending the United States Naval Academy. Too young to enroll, he instead attended Werntz's Annapolis Preparatory School, which coached boys for entrance into the service academies. While there Ellyson earned the nickname "Spuds" because of his appetite for potatoes. He entered the Naval Academy the following year and graduated in the middle of a class of 114 in January 1905. Ellyson was one of seven graduates who received honors in theoretical and practical gunnery.

On 2 February 1907, after his first two years at sea, Ellyson was commissioned an ensign. He volunteered for the navy's submarine force and was promoted to lieutenant junior grade early in 1910. By the end of that year, Ellyson had served as the commanding officer of the USS Tarantula, been promoted to full lieutenant on 16 September, and overseen the fitting out and commissioning of the USS Seal. During this period aviation history was being made that would soon influence Ellyson's naval career. In May 1910 Glenn Curtiss became the first aviator to fly from Albany to New York City. Seeing the applicability of airplanes to military combat, Curtiss established a flight-training school in San Diego and invited the navy to send one officer to be trained in the operation and construction of his airplane. Ellyson was selected and upon arrival in California in January 1911, he became the first naval officer assigned to aviation.

Over the next two years Ellyson assisted Curtiss in designing hydroplanes and land planes. He was instrumental in building the naval aviation program and made recommendations on the use and placement of sandbag arresting gear necessary for a successful launching and landing aboard the USS Pennsylvania on 18 January 1911. He accomplished many naval aviation firsts during his career. When the navy purchased its first airplane, an amphibian Triad known as the A-1, Curtiss and then Ellyson flew the plane out of Hammondsport, New York, in July 1911. Ellyson piloted the navy's first long-distance hydroplane flight on 3 November 1911, from Annapolis to Old Point Comfort in Virginia. His first attempt to launch the A-1 by catapult on 31 July 1912 failed, but on 12 November he made the first successful catapult launch of an aircraft when flying a Curtiss AH-3 at the Washington Navy Yard. He was officially designated Navy Air Pilot, No. 1, on 1 January 1914, in recognition of his pioneering work in naval aviation. He would receive a formal certificate of this designation in January 1918.

Three days after that launch Ellyson married Helen Mildred Lewis Glenn in Alexandria. They had three daughters. The following year he returned to shipboard duties and was assigned as a gunnery officer to the battleship USS South Carolina, where he served until 1916. Between 1916 and 1919 Ellyson served in multiple posts including instructor at the Naval Academy and at the Submarine Chaser Base in New London, Connecticut.

Promoted to lieutenant commander on 23 May 1917, the following year he received the first pair of gold wings given to a navy pilot. Ironically, he was dispatched overseas for duty with a submarine chaser squadron in Plymouth, England. For developing submarine-chasing-tactics doctrine while at Plymouth he received the Navy Cross. He spent another year in the European theater, helping to convert and command a German ocean liner into a U.S. transport ship to bring American troops home.

Ellyson served in command positions aboard a series of naval vessels from 1919 to 10 January 1921, when he became executive officer of the Naval Air Station, Naval Operating Base, in Hampton Roads. He was promoted to commander on 3 June 1921 and on 21 October became head of the plans division of the newly established Bureau of Aeronautics. Following a three-year tour as the aviation member of a U.S. naval mission to Brazil, he returned to the Bureau of Aeronautics. In 1926 he assisted in the fitting out of the USS Lexington, the navy's second aircraft carrier, and became the ship's first executive officer.

In the early morning hours of 27 February 1928—his forty-third birthday—Ellyson boarded a flight from Norfolk to Annapolis, where one of his daughters had been hospitalized. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff and sank into the Chesapeake Bay. In what naval officials described as the largest naval search operation of that era, dozens of aircraft searched for more than a month, while a $1,100 reward was posted for anyone who found the wreckage. Ultimately, only a few pieces of debris were found. Newspapers reported that forensic evidence indicated he survived the crash and tried to free himself from his flight suit. His body washed ashore at Willoughby Spit on 11 April 1928. His body was initially identified by the message in his pocket from his wife telling him of their daughter's illness. His cause of death was listed as drowning. The body of Theodore Gordon Ellyson was buried with full military honors in the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, where his gravestone includes the designation, "Naval Aviator Number One." In 1941 the navy commissioned the destroyer USS Ellyson in his honor, and the same year the navy named a field at Pensacola Naval Air Station Ellyson Field. In 1965 the National Aviation Hall of Fame honored Ellyson as the first naval aviator, and he was inducted into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame in November 1995.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Karl Schuon ed., U.S. Navy Biographical Dictionary (1964), 68–70, and George Van Deurs, Anchors in the Sky: Spuds Ellyson, The First Naval Aviator (1978), several portraits; Birth Register, Richmond City (as Gordon T. Ellyson), Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); BVS Marriage Register, Alexandria; Washington Post, 20 Nov. 1912; records and letters in Emil Buehler Naval Aviation Library, National Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, Fla., and Theodore Gordon Ellyson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Ellyson, "The Aeroplane for the Navy," in Glenn H. Curtiss and Augustus Post, The Curtiss Aviation Book (1912), 219–226; BVS Death Certificate Norfolk City (with variant 21 Dec. 1882 birth date in Indiana); accounts of his death in Richmond News Leader, 28, 29 Feb., 1–3 Mar., 11 Apr. 1928, and Washington Post, 2 Mar., 12 Apr. 1928.

Photograph in Glenn H. Curtiss and Augustus Post, The Curtiss Aviation Book (1912).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Christopher T. Brooks.

How to cite this page:
Christopher T. Brooks, "Theodore Gordon Ellyson (1885–1928)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Ellyson_Theodore_Gordon, accessed [today's date]).

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