George Ross

George Ross, son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Pawling) Ross, was born August 24, 1841. He obtained his preparatory education at the Tenent school at Hartsville, conducted by the Rev. Mahlon and Charles Long, and at the Lawrenceville, New Jersey Academy, under the tutorship of Dr. Hamill. He entered Princeton in January, 1858, and graduated in the class of 1861. He at once began the study of law with his father and brother at Doylestown and was admitted to the bar of the county June 13, 1864. At the death of his father the following year he formed a partnership with his elder brother, Hon. Henry P. Ross, which lasted until the elevation of the latter to the bench in 1869, when he became associated with Levi L. James, under the firm name of George Ross & L. L. James. At the death of Mr. James in 1889, J. Ferdinand Long became the junior partner.

Mr. Ross, like his father and grandfather, was a trained and erudite lawyer, by years of study and patient industry he had mastered the great principles of common and statute law, and soon earned the proud distinction of being the recognized leader of the bar in his native county. He was a forceful speaker, quiet and undemonstrative in his manner, not given to self-assertion in oratory. One of his contemporaries has said of him, “if the absence of art is the highest quality of oratory, he was an orator indeed. His remarkable knowledge of the law, his subtle power of logic, and his indomitable perseverance in the advocacy of the cause of a client, have made his memory dear to the people he served, and made his name remembered and honored in the community in which he lived.” In 1872 he was a member of the constitutional convention that framed our present state constitution, representing the counties of Bucks and Northampton in that body. He was elected to the state senate in 1886, and succeeded himself four years later, a distinction exceedingly rare in the history of his county. He was a life-long Democrat, and therefore represented the minority in the law-making body of the state. Notwithstanding this fact he soon became known as the recognized leader in all that pertained to the best interests of his state. At the organization of the senate on January 2, 1895, Senator Brewer, of Indiana county, who was not of his political faith, in calling the attention of the body to the death of Senator Ross, said in part: “Seldom has any legislative body been called upon to mourn the loss of a more distinguished member. This is not the proper time to pay a tribute to the distinguished services he rendered his state. There is such a thing as leadership, known and recognized among men, and the members of this body, irrespective of party, accorded to George Ross leadership. Although we have scarcely passed the threshold of this session, his absence is noticed and his counsel is missed.” Mr. Ross stood deservedly high in the counsels of his party. He was a delegate to the national conventions of 1876, 1884, and 1892. He was the Democratic nominee for the congress in the seventh district in 1884, but was defeated at the polls by Hon. Robert M. Yardley. He was also the caucus nominee of his party for the United States senate in 1893. He was deeply interested in the local insitutions of his county and district was one of the original directors of the Bucks County Trust Company, and its president at the time of his death. He was also a trustee of the Norristown Insane Asylum until his death. He died at his home in Doylestown, November 19, 1894. The disease which caused his death had given his family and friends much concern for probably a year. The state senate, of which he was a member at the time of his death, appointed a committee of five to draft resolutions expressive of the sense of that body upon his death, and fixed a special session on January 23, 1895, to receive and consider the report of such committee. At this special session the resolutions adopted and the speeches of his colleagues show the merited appreciation of his public services and private virtues. We quote from one of these speeches the following: “Our friends (sic) was not of humble origin, nor could he boast of being wholly a self-made man. He had great advantages, coming from a long line of distinguished ancestors, a race of lawyers, some of whom had worn the judicial ermine; he had the benefits of a most liberal education, and claimed the famous college of Princeton for his alma mater. This scion of one of the most illustrious families of Pennsylvania, in whose veins flowed some of the best blood in this grand old Keystone state, worthy of his origin, was a prince among men.”

George Ross married, December 4, 1870, Ellen Lyman Phipps, a daughter of George W. Phipps, of Boston, Massachusetts. The children of this marriage are: Thomas, born September 16, 1873; Elizabeth P., George; Ellen P., Mary; Gertrude.