Author: Ross, Thomas
Biography:
ROSS, Thomas (1768-1843: ancestry.co.uk)
The names of his parents are not known nor have any details about his early life and education been located. Likely he was born in Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, and sources give the year of his birth as 1768. (The 1841 Census gives his age as 70 which assumes a birth year of about 1771.) In about 1802 he was working as a private tutor in the house of the Rev. Dr. Kemp in Edinburgh. He was ordained by the presbytery of Edinburgh on 14 Apr. 1802 and in June of the same year he was admitted as pastor to the Scottish Church in Rotterdam. However, he suffered from ill-health and, although an assistant was appointed to help with his duties, Ross returned to Scotland to recover. He resigned from his position in Apr. 1806. In 1808 he was appointed minister to the church in Lochbroom, Rosshire; he described the parish as comprehending “a tract of country of the roughest and most difficult in Scotland.” Many of his parishioners were Gaelic speakers and Ross, a Gaelic scholar, supported the establishment of schools by the Gaelic School Society. In 1809 he earned his LLD although no information about the degree-granting university has been found. On 10 Jan. 1810 he married Jane McKenzie (d 1849) of Dundonell, Cromarty; they had ten children. In 1817 he had a new church built in Lochbroom; in the same year he joined the Scottish Free Secession church. He died on 21 July 1843 and was buried in the cemetery at Lochbroom. His other publications include A Compendious System of Geography (1804), Letters to the Rev. John Campbell…on the Subject of a False Report…to the Prejudice of the Rev. Thomas Ross (1807), and Letters and Other Documents on the Subject of a New Translation of the Scriptures into Gaelic (1821). (ancestry.co.uk 28 Sept. 2023; Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ [1870]; William Steven, The History of the Scottish Church, Rotterdam [1833])