John Ross House - Vestiges of the Trail of Tears in Georgia
Rossville, GA
John Ross House, Rossville, GA." Image source: An undated postcard.
If the most historic home in North Georgia could
talk, it would cry with Uncle Remus, ‘Give me elbow
room, I’m ‘bleeged to have it.’ The old place is almost
completely surrounded by business houses; a bank and
wholesale grocery flank each side, in the front is an ice
cream store, and in the rear is a parking lot. Only a small
strip of land remains, no bigger than a pocket handkerchief,
and that is desired for further business expansion as well as
the land where the Ross house stands.
The various people who have lived in the Ross
house were conscious of the tangible history surrounding
them, and all have felt honored that their house had once
been the home of one of the greatest Indians in American
history, the founder of Rossville and Chattanooga ….
Ann Shorey, a Cherokee Indian and daughter of
William Shorey, interpreter at Old Fort Loudon south of
Knoxville, married John McDonald, British Agent to the
Cherokees at Chickamauga. One day, according to
Sartain’s History of Walker County, a party of traders,
including Daniel Ross, was passing down the Tennessee
River when they were captured by the Chickamauga
Indians, where custom it was to kill all captives. John
McDonald interceded for the life of Daniel Ross, probably
because he was a Scotchman and perhaps one of the
McDonald clan. Later, Daniel Ross married John
McDonald’s daughter, Mollie. they became the parents of
John Ross.
At the outbreak of the Revolution … John
McDonald lived on Chickamauga Creek at the present city
limits of Chattanooga, on the ground where Brainerd
Mission to the Cherokees was later located in 1817 …
British subjects were not popular when the Revolution
began and McDonald, Daniel Ross and others who took the
British side of the controversy refugeed behind the
protection of Lookout Mountain at what was then the
Cherokee town of Turkeytown, where John Ross was born.
The Cherokees made peace with the Americans
in 1794 after twenty years of unceasing warfare … At the
conclusion of peace, John McDonald was enabled to return
to his old home and in 1797 he built the present John Ross
house at Rossville.
The John Ross house is located at Andrews Street and East Lake Avenue, just south of U.S. Highway 27, in Rossville, Walker County.
