Transcription contributed by Arne H Trelvik 15 May 2003

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Thomas R. Ross was born in New Garden Township, Chester Co., Penn., October 26, 1788. He was the eldest child of Dr. John Ross and his wife, Catherine Randolph. On his mother’s side, he was related to John Randolph, of Roanoke, Va. His parents were Quakers, and Thomas R. was educated in a Quaker institution at West Town in his native county, and afterward studied law with his uncle, Thomas Ross, in Philadelphia. He opened a law office in Chester County soon after his admission to the bar, in 1808, but in 1809 he emigrated to the West, stopping for awhile in Cincinnati, and in 1810 came to Lebanon and practiced his profession. He was a forcible speaker, and, notwithstanding the ability of the lawyers he encountered in the Miami Circuit, he rose to distinction. In 1818, Mr. Ross was elected a Member of Congress from the First Ohio District, which consisted of the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Preble, as the successor of Gen. William Henry Harrison. He was twice re-elected, and served as Representative in Congress from 1819 until 1825. Early in his Congressional career, Mr. Ross was called on to participate in one of the most exciting and agitating controversies in the history of the country – that which was settled by the adoption of the Missouri Compro-

A personal friend of Mr. Ross, in an obituary notice, wrote of him as follows: “Associated in Congress with so many good and great men, it is not strange that his defeat for another term was to him a severe blow, and one from which he could never rally. The loss of his seat subjected him to a trial too great for him, and perhaps for any man of his ardent temperament. Truth requires me to say this much, and for years afterward he seemed to find relief from disappointed hopes only in the effects of stimulating drinks. Giving way to this indulgence, the appetite soon became uncontrollable, and for years his life was worse than a blank. But, with an iron constitution and a mind still unimpaired, when friends had almost given him up, he determined to resist the destroyer, and, by the blessing of God, as he himself recognized, was enabled to overcome this great foe to man’s health and happiness. For many of his last years, he lived a temperate and considerate life, and was restored to the confidence and respect of his friends.” He practiced law for some years after his retirement from Congress. In 1835, he was elected a Representative in the State Legislature. During the last years of his life, he resided on a farm one and a half miles east of Lebanon. During the last two years of his life, he was blind from cataract of the eyes. He died on the 28th of June 1869, in the eighty-first year of his age.

In 1811, Mr. Ross was married to Harriet Van Horne, a daughter of Rev. William Van Horne, a Baptist clergyman and a Chaplain during the Revolutionary war. She survived her husband, with a family of six children.