Ellen Elizabeth Grafham was born March 25th 1886 in Hersham, Surrey, UK. The 10th child of Thomas Henry Grafham and Mary Ann Elizabeth Collyer. Ellens father Thomas was a master builder working around Surrey, and her mother was an interior decorator. all seven of her brothers participated in World War I, her brother James Arthur Grafham being killed at the battle of Flanders.

Ellen is listed in the 1891 census as "Nellie" aged 4 years. in the 1901 census she is listed a servant in the employ of the Mount Lee Lodge old peoples home, Egham Hill, Surrey aged 15. She came out to New Zealand by herself and was later joined by her sister Ethel Grafham who married James William Kitney. She married Fred Wills in Gisborne in 1916 and had six children, John, Frank, Freda, Arthur, Robert and Charlie. Fred constatly left her alone to look after the children and this seems to have taken its toll on her as she died at the young age of 45 of Pneumonia and an infection that spread from an abscess in her mouth. She was laid to rest in the Ormond cemetery in Gisborne in 1931.