Robert Ross, who is proprietor of a blacksmith and carriage-making business in Santa Rosa, has carried on this enterprise for over thirty years. He is not only one of the pioneers in the industrial interests of Sonoma county, but is likewise one of its most prominent citizens. He has been identified with California history since boyhood, a period of nearly forty years, and is a typical representative of the best citizenry of the state, stanch and true to principle and the established institutions, upright and honorable in all the relations of life, and one of the substantial natures whom the community banks on as one of its principal assets when a comprehensive summing up of its individual worth of character and manhood is made.

Mr. Ross was born in Franklin county, New York, May 20, 1845, and was a son of a life-long farmer in that county and state, Robert Ross, Sr., who died at the age of fifty-nine years. His mother, Jane (Miller) Ross, is still living on the old homestead in New York state, and is now in advanced age.

Mr. Ross passed his youthful days on a farm, where at an early age he learned the value and importance of hard labor. In the meantime he attended the neighboring district school, principally during the winter. He learned the blacksmith and carriage-making trade at Buffalo, New York, and was a master workman in this line when he arrived in Sonoma county, California, in Novebmer, 1865, when not yet twenty-one years of age. He began business in Sebastopol, and for three years the firm of Crawford and Ross continued a prosperous trade. Mr. Ross then drew out of the firm, and came to Santa Rosa, where in 1872 he established the carriage-making and blacksmith business which he has carried on so successfully ever since. He has a good and dependable trade, and much of his patronage has continued steadily with him since he began business.

Mr. Ross affiliates with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Evergreen Lodge. He is independent in matters political, and served as school trustee for six years. He was married in 1872 to Miss Lou Ann Hall, a daughter of Bishop Hall, of Santa Rosa. They have four children: William, a blacksmith, in Santa Rosa; Jane, who married C. F. Brearty, a tacher, and they have one child; Lottie, who married George Jensen; and Ruby, at home.

Source: History of the New California Its Resources and People, Volume I

The Lewis Publishing Company - 1905
Edited by Leigh H. Irvine