Person:George Ross (20)

George Ross was born about 1629 as he gave his age as 35 in 1664. Family tradition is that he was a Scots soldier captured by Oliver Cromwell's forces at either the Battle of Dunbar on September 3, 1650 or the Battle of Worchester on September 3, 1651 and deported to the American Colonies. There were at least two boatloads of prisoners sent to New England. His name is not among the legible names on the passenger list of the ship, John and Sarah, coming in November 1651 although there were nine other Rosses aboard. The ship Unity came earlier in 1650 but there is no record of the 150 Scots aboard.   George arrived in Boston before July 28, 1651, when the Rev. John Cotton referred to him in a letter, and he worked in Winthrop's Saugus Mine Works as an indentured man.

Within six years George, a carpenter by trade, was free and made his way to New Haven, CT, where he was listed a free man on 1 Oct 1657He was married by the Governor on December 7, 1658 to Constance Little or Littel, and in 1670 he moved to Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He took the oath of Fidelity May 1660. He was admitted a freeman in New Haven in 1658. He was appointed by the General Assembly a Lieutenant of the Elizabethtown Foot Militia with his commission dated December 3, 1683; one of the Judges of the Court of Small Cases May 1, 1686; he had an allotment of 120 acres "in Right of himself and wife." In May 1671 the first jury at Elizabethtown sat, and Geo. Ross was a member of it - "all freeholders, and most of them leading men." On September 11, 1673 he took the Oath of Allegiance. He appears in a Survey on March 27, 1676, as owning 120 acres. In 1682 he was one of six assessors for Elizabethtown. In 1694 he was one of many who subscribed to the support of Rev. John Harrison of the 1st Presbyterian Church. He is shown as "Deacon Geo. Ross" and he subscribed one pound, 10 shillings. (p. 284) George Ross purchased land in New Haven in 1659. George was chosen a fence viewer in 1662. In May 1671, George was impaneled a juror. Back in New Haven, there had been no jurors until the colony became part of Connecticut, just a panel of judges. On 11 Sep 1673, George Ross signed the oath of allegiance. In 1676 at Elizabethtown, Essex Co., NJ, he was granted a land patent for 132 acres in six parcels, being a house lot of 6 acres next to Jonas Wood and Caleb Carwithy, 18 acres of upland in the neck next to Barnabas Wines, William Johnson and John Gray; 40 acres of upland on the plains next to John LITTLE and Fresh Meadows; 50 acres of upland at Rahawack point to Elizabethtown Creek on the great river; and 12 acres at Rahway. That year, on 4 Dec 1676, he was appointed Select Man to judge minor court cases.