Rose Ellis was a Nisenan girl who was stolen from her parents by two gold miners in 1866. The miners intended to force her to serve as a nursemaid for the children of one of them, but then they lost all their gold dust to gambling and consequently sold her to W. T. Ellis, Sr. for $500. She was forced to work as a nursemaid for the Ellises' three children for the rest of her life, but she expressed her longing for her original culture by refusing to adhere to many of the Ellises' customs; she insisted on sleeping in a rolled-up blanket on the floor rather than in a bed. She fell ill with tuberculosis in 1876 and died of it in 1879.