09 November 2012

Dr. Alexander Milton Ross


Michigan history magazine's profile of the estimable Doctor Alexander Milton Ross started with:

"There died in the city of Detroit on October 27, 1897, a man whose services in the abolition movement and during the Civil War were of so self sacrificing and daring a character that they gained for him the tributes not only of the abolition leaders but of Lincoln himself."
He was recalled to Canada by the illness and death of his mother, and then returning to the United States embarked upon his adventurous career as one of the most daring of slave abductors. Through Gerrit Smith he obtained full information regarding the workings of the underground railroad... .




Dr. Ross's plan was to go right into the heart of the South... .  [Which he did.]

[He] left Toronto in September 1897 to go to Chicago live with a daughter there and was visiting with his son,  Dr. Norman G. Ross, 79 Bagg Street, Detroit, death overtook him.

Doctor Ross and his family were living in Montreal when the 1881 census was taken:

Canada Census, 1881
census place: St-Antoine Ward, Montreal (City), Quebec, Canada
Household  Gender Age
Alexander Ross  M 49y
Hester E. Ross  F 43y
Minnie Ross  F 23y
May Ross   F 14y [In 1900]*
[Norman] Garibaldi Ross  M 7y
Ann Norman F  18y

*Died when a Christmas wreath opened up a gas jet (various newspaper accounts)

Dr. Alexander M. Ross's widow, Hester, died in 1920.


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