Jonathan and Elizabeth Ross: Patriots, Part 2

    Jonathan Ross was among the soldiers who fell that day at Crooked Billet. Was he among those burned alive or hacked to death with cutlasses? The record does not show.

     On 23 August 1780, his widow Elizabeth joined John Ross (probably Jonathan’s brother), and John Buchanan as joint administrators of Jonathan’s estate, and together they reported a valued of £793.14.12.[i] Elizabeth received a dower of £264.11.5, while the children, John, Elizabeth, Jane/Jean, Nancy, and Mary, received smaller sums .[ii] On 23 August 1780, John Ross, Jonathan’s brother, was appointed guardian.[iii]

    In a few years Elizabeth, who did not remarry, found herself in reduced circumstances. Court records document her struggle to obtain a pension from the state.[iv] On 21 February 1787, she petitioned: “the said Jonathan Ross was killed in the engagement at Crooked Billet on the first day of May 1778 doing his duty as a private of the Militia, leaving your petitioner and seven children in a distressed situation; that several of said children were very young and totally incapable of supporting themselves and that your petitioner, since her husband’s death, hath labored under great difficulties and distress to procure a bare sustenance for herself and the children…”[v]

    The court considered the condition of her premises from reports supplied by the Overseers of the Poor and two freeholders. It then awarded her Jonathan’s half pay of 12 shillings and six pence per month retroactive to 1 May 1778, totaling £67.[vii]

      The situation worsened. Her only son John died unmarried in 1793, leaving a will that named his mother and his sisters Jane Ross, Nancy Ross, and Margaret (Mary?).[viii]  Some of the other daughters had married – Ann to William Ferguson (my fourth-great grandparents), and Jane with Thomas Ross, apparently a cousin.[ix] On 7 November 1796, the county sheriff appraised Elizabeth’s property at £848.8.10 and then sold it.[x] As late as 20 April 1801, Elizabeth continued to struggle to have her pension continued.[xi] On 11 April 1807, she wrote a will, naming only daughters Mary and Elizabeth, with Robert Robb a “trusty friend” as executor.[xii]     

       Historian Judith Ridner uses Elizabeth’s plight to illustrate the challenges brought about by the war for many backcountry women. “Widows, in particular, often found their economic independence contested or curtailed by wartime circumstances. Yet, because economic freedom was of such basic importance to women, when they found their autonomy … challenged, they moved readily into the courts to obtain relief.”[xiii]

      Jonathan and Elizabeth were both patriots – Jonathan, for giving his life to the Revolutionary cause, and Elizabeth, for struggling valiantly to maintain her family and her pride in the shadow of a devastating loss. I honor them both for their sacrifice.

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[i] Orphan’s Court Records of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 23 August 1780, volume 2, page 273.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Judith A. Ridner, "'To Have Sufficient Maintenance': Women and the Economies of Freedom in Frontier Pennsylvania, 1750-1800," in Larry Eldridge, ed., Women and Freedom in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 170-171.

[v] Orphan’s Court Records of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 21 February 1787, volume 3, page 18.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] John Ross will (1793), Cumberland County, PA Will Book E: 311; transcript in Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Abstracts of Wills, 1750-1800 (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1905), 91: 408.

[ix] Orphan’s Court Records of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 9 February 1796, volume 3, page 173.

[x] Ibid, November 1796, pages 188-191.

[xi] Ibid, page 319.

[xii] Elizabeth Ross will (1807), Cumberland County, PA Will Book G: 352-353; abstracted in F. Edward Wright, Abstracts of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania Wills, 1785-1825 (Westminster, MD: Family Line Publications, 1998), 155.

[xiii] Ridner, “’To Have a Sufficient Maintenance’: Women and the Economies of Freedom in Frontier Pennsylvania, 1750-1800,” 170.