MIDDLESEX Ellen Florella Pease, 98, died Tuesday, 3-18-08, at Central Vermont Hospital. She was born May 20, 1909, at the Cummings place in Shady Rill, the oldest daughter of Lester and Bertha (Cummings) Pease,and attended Middlesex schools and Montpelier High School. As a girl,she was a member of the Merry Maids Club and the Christian Endeavor Society, and was a member and clerk at the Shady Rill Baptist Church for 63 years. A lifetime of fragile health prevented her from many activities, but Ellen took a deep interest in the world from the farm she shared with her brother Gerald for over 70 years. Patience, contentment, a deep sense of gratitude for what she had been given, and an abiding faith were among her greatest virtues. Ellen was a fine historian and a charter member of the Middlesex Historical Society. She was an archivist of all things local. She remembered and honored names, generations and relationships, and understood that keeping these facts alive was important for understanding and respecting the foundations of her community. She cherished and was faithful to the friends in her life, read her Times Argus cover to cover each day, and sent thousands of letters over the years to friends and family. She loved plants, and her annual invitation to watch her Night-Blooming Cereus open was a treasured event to many friends. Despite poor eyesight, she loved to quilt, and also enjoyed her meals, her word search puzzles, and taking long rides on back roads. Ellen was president of the Church of Women Society, the Willing Workers, for many years and was also president of the Central Vt. Association of Baptist Women for several years. At one time she was the Business and Professional Woman of the Baptist State Convention. Ellen was a member of the Middlesex Grange No. 80 where she served as chaplain, lecturer, and secretary, and as Pomona Grange Home Economics chairman. Ellen was pre-deceased by her sister Dorothy (Pease) Morrison in 2003 and her brother Gerald Pease two weeks later. She leaves a nephew, David Morrison, and three nieces, Annie Southern, Mildred (Morrison) Winston and Mary Morrison, and relatives Nancy and Bob Chamberlain and family. She will be greatly missed by the many neighbors and friends who thought of her as family, especially the many children who grew up haying on the farm and drinking her switchel. A graveside service is planned for her birthday, May 20, at the North Branch Cemetery in Middlesex. There will be no calling hours.