The Green Bag VOL. XVII.
No. 6
BOSTON
JUNE, 1905
JONATHAN ROSS Bv RUSSELL WALES TAFT SINCE Nathaniel Chipman, in 1793, pub bride to make a home. Here he cleared lished the most unique and one of up a farm and on November n, 1820, died the earliest volumes of state reports, many of typhus fever, the same malady having eminent jurists have graced the Supreme in the previous year robbed him of two Bench of the state of Vermont. Charles K. of his four sons and one of his two daughters. Williams, Stephen Royce, Royall Tyler, Royal, son of Jonathan and Lucy Ross, was Samuel S. Phelps, Jacob Collamer, Isaac born on the homestead in Waterford, July Redfield, Milo F. Bennett, and Luke P. 22, 1799, and there passed his entire life, Poland, among others, have had a share dying November 2, 1856. He married in in molding the body of law comprised in 1821, Eliza, daughter of Rev. Reuben Mason, the Vermont Reports, and among these a pioneer Congregational clergyman. Reu Jonathan Ross, the subject of this sketch, ben Mason was a lineal descendant of may worthily rank. Pelatiah Mason, one of the nine sons of Jonathan Ross was born April 30, 1826, in Sampson Mason, who came from England the town of Waterford, one of the easterly and settled, in 1649, in Dorchester, Mass. tier of towns in Caledonia County, Vt., on He had served under Cromwell, and his the Connecticut River. He was descended descendants have included many men of from Roger Ross, held by family tradition distinction. to have been a Scotchman, who was born When Jonathan Ross, the elder, came September 20, 1740, and died in Phillipston, with his wife to Waterford, in 1795, an Mass., October 6, 1817. Roger Ross en ox sled carried all his movable possessions listed for service August 21, 1777, in the except the cow, which was led behind. In colonial army and marched to Bennington. the remaining twenty-five years of his life but arrived too late to take part in the he added one hundred acres to his estate, battle. September 27, of the same year, he fenced it all, mostly with stone walls (pro again enlisted under the same commanders, bably the procurement of the building Captain Josiah Wilder and Colonel Nathan materials necessitated no very extended Sparhawk, and served twenty-nine days, journey), and built two frame barns and participating in the battle of Saratoga. a frame house, all of which were well stocked February 14, 1771, Molly Rugg, wife of and furnished. Royal Ross succeeded to Roger Ross, bore him a son who was named this estate at the age of twenty-one, upon Jonathan. When Jonathan was but a child his father's death, the only other surviving his mother died. Before attaining his major son being but seven years of age. ity he purchased his time and subsequently Into the primitive life consistent with his spent some time at Chesterfield, N. H., where father's circumstances, Jonathan Ross, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1826, he married Lucy Stoddard. In 1793 Jon athan bought one hundred acres of wild being the eldest son and third of twelve land in what is now the town of Waterford, children, of whom all but one lived to and there in February, 1795, brought his maturity. The industry, sobriety and
