|
Sullivan Ross of Harrington (in Oxford County, 9 miles south of Stratford, Ontario) was born on May 9th 1828 at Badninish in Sutherland County, Scotland, on Achavandra Muir just south of Skelbo Wood and three miles north of Dornoch. When he was five years old, his parents Alexander and Margaret Ross left the croft at Bridgend where they lived. About 1838 they took Sullivan, his brother William and two sisters to Canada where by 1844-5 they were living in a log house just west and below the crest of a hill on a four acre clearing: Lot 31, W1/2, Concession 3 West Zorra, Ontario. 
The males in this pioneer family continued to clear the brush and wooded land after the sale of adjoining crown lands gave them possession of one hundred acres by 1859. The Census Report of 1851 noted that there were six offspring in the family, and in this year a frame house was built on the crest of the hill. When Sullivan brought his bride Margaret Matheson home in 1857, the 1861 Census would list ten members in this cramped household.
Sullivan's father died in 1880 and left the farm to him, where he would remain until his death in 1880. Over the years, he had continued to collect tunes and to transcribe them most carefully into the four volumes which his grandsons rebound and indexed. As a musician and violin maker, Sullivan's life requires more than his obituary or the brief facts on his granite stone in Harrington's Presbyterian Cemetry, little more than a stone's throw from the land where he lived and died on 29 July 1904. - from the biography by Alexander M. Ross (grandson)
|
|
SULLIVAN ROSS 1828 - 1904 HIS WIFE MARGARET MATHESON 1838 - 1916 Harrington West Cemetery adjoining Knox Presbyterian Church |
| Grave of Sullivan Ross at Harrington |
