Correspondence

Admiral Nelson  and Hercules Ross

"The book 'Letters from Admiral Lord Nelson to Hercules Ross, Esq., of Rossie, N.B., 1780-1802' does exist indeed. I have a copy in my possession. It was published, probably by the Ross family, "For private circulation only".

A note, on a printed letterhead "35, Sloane Court, S.W.3 Sloane 1913" says: "The original letters were presented by Admiral GP Ross C B to the 'Victory' museum, Portsmouth Dockyard.”

The present copy is the JA Ross' copy with his/her beautiful armorial bookplate, his/her inscription dated 1891, and his/her signature.

Who was JA Ross? - This is what I am trying now to find out."

A. Abraham Holtzman, The Hague, Netherlands:  15 January 2006

Admiral G P Ross

"Admiral GP Ross would be Rear-Admiral George Parrish Ross. (GP Ross is grandson of Horatio Ross via the oldest son Horatio Senftenberg John Ross.) 

He entered the Royal Navy in 1888 on HMS Britannia; Commander, 1908; Captain, 1914; retired, 1920; Rear-Admiral, 1925. 

He served: at Cape of Good Hope, Gambia Expedition (Gen West African Medal with clasp, 1894), Mediterranean fleet, HMS Surprise; the Balkan fleet on HMS Lord Nelson and at the Battle of Jutland, 1916.  See De Bretts Companionage and Clan Ross History"

J A  Ross

"JA  Ross would most likely be John Alexander Ross (also grandson of Horatio Ross and brother to GP Ross above).

I have no details on him - just his name."

(But see below  - Peter Stubs)

Janet Beale, Sydney, Australia:  16 January 2006

Nelson Correspondence

"The Nelson/Ross letters are in the archives of the Royal Naval Museum, having been donated by my cousin Ian.

They appear in a full collection of Nelson's correspondence published by Chatham Publishing but are spread out throughout seven volumes."

Alison Ramos, USA:  May 2005

Family History

"I have been doing some research into the Ross family (although not directly my own, it became compulsive once I started!), begun by my father and inspired by my great-great-grandmother, Elisabeth Ross. She was a great-niece of Hercules Ross and so cousin once removed of Horatio.

Born in 1819, she married my great-great-grandfather, James Craig of Pollokshaws, in the parish of Eastwood in Renfrewshire, on 16 June 1843. The couple had two children, one of which was my great grandfather, William Craig. Unfortunately Elisabeth died young in 1850; James Craig remarried and had further issue.

Family Items

"From this Elisabeth has come down, to my father and me, a number of articles of particular interest for her Ross line, including the following:.

1.  a bible belonging to Hercules Ross himself, in which he records in his own hand the names, dates and places of the births of the 13 children (nine sons and three daughters born variously in Edinburgh, Dumfries, Kilmarnock, Govan, Benholm and Port Glasgow) born to his father, John Ross (late officer of excise at Port Glasgow — quite a jammy job in those days, before the Clyde was deepened, around 1768, to allow ships to sail upriver to Glasgow itself) by his first wife, Janet Haldane, or Hadden, (married 28 May 1724, 3 children), and his second wife, Elizabeth Fullarton (Fowlertoun), grand-daughter of John Fullarton, Non-Jurant Bishop of Edinburgh, (married 29 July 1732 at Port Glasgow, 10 children).

2. a prayer book autographed by James Ross, the youngest of John Ross's sons, born in Port Glasgow in 1749: "James Ross to Mrs Helen Carmichael, Rossie, 22nd July 1787". (Helen Carmichael, née Ross, was an elder sister who married a James Carmichael in Port Glasgow. I venture that, as she was born in 1747, it was given on the occasion of her 50th birthday.)

3. a book of psalms belonging to Mary Colquhoun, another niece of Hercules and James, daughter of their sister, Margaret, who married a Humphrey Colquhoun also in Port Glasgow. Mary Colquhoun died unmarried in 1821 at Craig House on the Rossie Castle estate by Montrose and seems to have been something of "maiden aunt" figure to Horatio and his siblings. She was also named executor of Hercules Ross's estate. (Hercules Ross was himself born in the nearby parish of Benholm, so he seems to have gone back to the region of his roots to build his castle on lands he purchased in 1783/85 from the Trustees of Patrick Scott.)

More Family Members

"One of Hercules's brothers, Colin, was a doctor who settled in Hamburg and became secretary to the Association of Hamburg Merchant Adventurers. Among his descendents were the brothers Charles Ross, a leading landscape painter of his day, Gustav Ross, a pioneering physician, and Ludwig Ross, a classicist and epigrapher, as well as Edgar Daniel Ross, a liberal who became a prominent Hamburg politician, .

It is through this Colin that Hercules may have met the expatriate Hamburg merchant John Parish, whose daughter he married. The families may very well already have know each other as Parish, and his wife, Henrietta Tod, hailed from South Leith. Another brother, as Alison mentions, was Daniel, whom her family tradition has it fell foul of the law as a privateer or, as Charles Phipps suggests, got on the wrong side of Nelson and was hung from the yard arm. I suspect he ended up in America together with another brother, David, who became a iron-works entrepreneur in Virginia (around the same time as Hercules Ross's brother-in-law, David Parish, was doing the same along the St Lawrence in upstate New York)."

William J Roderick Craig, Oslo, Norway:  June 6, 2007

Mrs Horatio Ross

Photographer

"Horatio Ross's eldest son was called Horatio Senftenberg Ross.  It was presumably his wife who took the photos."

Stephen Beadle

Comment

Even Horatio Ross probably lived too early for his wife to have been taking photos around 1930.  Horatio Senftenberg Ross was born in 1834.

Perhaps it was the wife of one of the next generation of the Ross family who took the photos.  Horatio Senftenberg Ross had eight children.

Alison Ramos, USA

"Daniel Ross was arguably one of the two or three greatest hydrographic surveyors of the 19th century and has been called 'the father of the Indian surveys'.

He was born in Jamaica in 1780 and was the half-brother of Horatio Ross."

Hercules & Daniel Ross

"I am greatly intrigued with mention of Daniel and the Jamaica connection. 

There is a title in possession of the Angus Council of a short study of Hercules and Daniel Ross by M. Butterfield.

Unfortunately, owing I imagine to copyright, they are unable to supply more than a select number of pages to anyone interested.

This Daniel's career is not to be confused with Hercules' brother, Daniel, who ran afoul of the law as a privateer."

Alison Ramos, USA:  May 2005

"I did not know about Daniel Ross, though Horatio had an uncle, Daniel Ross (1741-1788), who supposedly got into trouble in the West Indies. He seems in some way to have got on the wrong side of Hercules Ross's great friend, Horatio Nelson; however, the family tradition that Nelson hanged him from the yard-arm is certainly false!

Horatio Ross had four sisters: Henrietta (married William Ellice, MP for Invergarry), Elizabeth Margaret (married Lawrence Oliphant of Condie), Maria Georgina and Anna (married Daniel Colquhoun).

There is a romantic mystery over Hercules Ross's antecedents. His father was John Ross (1705-1753, married Elizabeth Fullarton) and his grandfather Robert Ross (married Mary Colquhoun). Robert Ross is supposed to have been an illegitimate son of Lord Ross of Halkhead and to have joined the wrong side in the Jacobite struggles, thereby falling out with the Hanoverian Halkheads and losing everything. Whether any of this is true or not I suppose we shall now never know."

"I recently got access to a book (unpublished) about Horatio's father, Hercules, thanks to my Parish cousins whose ancestor Henrietta was Hercules' wife.

Any rate we have learned about a whole new aspect of old Herc's early life in Jamaica.

If it's OK with her perhaps you could let me have your correspondent's address and we could go from there.."

Alison Ramos, USA:  October 10, 2006

Daniel Ross  -  Family Tree

"I have created this family tree for Daniel Ross (the Indian Navy officer and wrong side of the blanket Ross) from such intelligence as I have gleaned.

Someone may be interested and if anyone has any more information on Daniel then I should like to hear from them and would be happy to share what I have

I am writing his biography (rather fuller and more comprehensive that either the chapter on him in Agnes Butterfield’s thesis in Montrose public library, or her brief essay in typescript in the archives of the Royal Society (Daniel Ross was made FRS in 1821))."

Dr Stephen Davies, Hong Kong:  November 21, 2008

"Please could you let me have any details that you have on Daniel Ross's mother, born around or after 1737 and probably died in childbirth about 1781 in Jamaica.  She might be buried in the Old Naval Cemetery, Port Royal, Kingston.  She is my great, great, great, grandmother.

I understand that there is a portrait of Capt Daniel Ross at the Bombay Geographical Society"

Mrs R M Dalladay:  January 21, 2005

"Daniel Ross’ mother Elizabeth Foord died in Jamaica, ‘a woman of property with three houses, which she ran as boarding establishments, a pen with cattle and fifty-two slaves.’ (Butterfield, p.1 – this is Agnes Butterfield’s very brief life of Daniel Ross lodged as a manuscript with the Royal Society of London (DR was made FRS in on 13.6.1822))

In AB (this is Agnes Butterfield’s MA thesis (I think for Manchester University in the 1970s), in a copy lodged at Montrose Public Library, Scotland), p.95 ‘she owned 3 houses and a penn, with personal property valued at £6,903.3.4½ currency including 52 slaves, 35 sheep, £300 worth of silver teapots, coffee pots, waiters and other articles, and the furniture of her houses’ two of which she ran as boarding houses, the New House with 12 bedrooms, the older with 8 bedrooms both two storied buildings with piazzas front and back.

She left much of her property to her clerk, four of her slaves she freed and a few legacies.  The rest went 2/7 to Eliza and Jane, 1/7 each to Daniel, Hercules and David ‘all of whom she believed to be in the East Indies’. If Hercules was dead, his share went to Daniel’s eldest son so ‘it would seem she was getting some news of them and their whereabouts."

Dr Stephen Davies, Museum Director, Hong Kong Maritime Museum: Oct 23, 2007

"The Bombay (Mumbai) retirement portrait, which was certainly around in the 1970s, seems to have disappeared. Both electronic and actual contact with the supposed location of the portrait in Bombay has turned up nothing.

The people there are aware that it did exist, but now say there is no record of what happened to it. I have a rather poor electronic image of a poor photocopy of the portrait."

Dr Stephen Davies, Museum Director, Hong Kong Maritime Museum: Oct 23, 2007

"I am contributing to a new publication by the Montrose Basin Heritage Society. My subject is the Rossie Estate near Montrose, Angus, the home of Horatio Ross.

I am trying to track down images of his Father and Mother, Hercules Ross (1745-1816) and his wife Henrietta, née Parish  (1765-1811).

So far, the only portraits I can find are in an unpublished thesis by Agnes Butterfield who must be deceased by now. The only information I have about the portraits is that she reproduced them with the permission of Admiral G Parish Ross, no address supplied.

Would it be possible to post this request on your website which I believe has been very helpful to other researchers of the Ross family"

Amanda Briant-Evans, near Montrose, Angus, Scotland