Before the Cherokee Removal in 1838, Chattanooga was known as Ross's Landing. John Ross established this ferry landing and trading post at the current site of the Tennessee Aquarium and Market Street Bridge in 1816. Ross would later become nationally prominent as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
John Ross was born on Oct. 3, 1790, to Daniel and Mollie Ross in Turkey Town, what is now Etowah County, Ala. Daniel, a native of Scotland, joined the trading house of John McDonald and married his daughter Mollie in 1785. Mollie's mother, Anna Shorey, was a daughter of William Shorey, interpreter for the British army, and his Cherokee wife.
John grew up at his father's store on Chattanooga Creek near the foot of Lookout Mountain. His grandmother, Anna McDonald, imbued in him a deep love of the Cherokee people and their traditions. John's formal education began at a school, the first in the Cherokee Nation, that Daniel started at his home with Rev. Gideon Blackburn, a missionary to the Cherokees. Later John studied at an academy in Kingston, Tenn., formerly Fort Southwest Point.
In 1809, Cherokee Agent Return J. Meigs sent John Ross to Arkansas to evaluate the needs of the Western Cherokee. In the War of 1812, Ross served under Andrew Jackson as an adjutant of the Cherokee Regiment. He served again in the Creek Wars of 1813-14, attaining the rank of lieutenant at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
In 1816, John Ross opened the trading post known as Ross's Landing. He also established warehouses for his trading company, raised tobacco on a 170-acre farm and helped start the Brainerd Mission and School. During this period, he lived in the log house in Rossville built by his grandfather John McDonald. When a U.S. Post Office was established in Rossville in 1817, John Ross was appointed its first postmaster. That year he also was chosen a member of the National Council. Increasingly involved in Cherokee politics, he moved to Coosa near the current Rome, Ga., to be closer to the Cherokee capitol at New Echota.
Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
Learn more
› Who: National Park Service Ranger Chris Young.› What: A free program, “‘Our Hearts Are Sickened:’ John Ross Fights for his People.”› When: Aug. 12 from 2 to 3:30 p.m.› Where: Chief John Ross House, Lake Avenue and Spring Street in Rossville.
In 1828, he was elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. The State of Georgia confiscated Ross's home at Coosa in 1830, and he moved to Red Clay, Tenn., the new center of government for the Cherokee Nation.
After gold was discovered in North Georgia, the state outlawed the Cherokee government. President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Chief John Ross and the majority opposed it, but a splinter group signed the treaty, which Congress ratified on May 23, 1836, setting the stage for the Cherokee Removal, known as the Trail of Tears.
On Nov. 14, 1838, 10 days after the last contingent of native Americans left for the West, the name of the Ross's Landing post office that had opened at Long's store the previous year was officially changed to Chattanooga.
After supervising the departure of 13 groups on the 2,200-mile overland march, Ross and his family departed on the water route. John Ross's wife, Quatie, died on the journey.
In Oklahoma, Ross was re-elected principal chief of the Cherokee and continued to serve in that capacity until his death at age 76 on Aug. 1, 1866, in Washington, D.C., where he was working on behalf of his people. He was buried at Ross Cemetery, Park Hill, Okla.
The house is the last remnant of this area's Cherokee past and has a fascinating history. When John Ross moved to Coosa, he turned it over to the Rev. Nicholas D. Scales, who was married to his niece. James Jones from Laurens County, Ga., won it in the land lottery after the Cherokee Removal and promptly sold it to Thomas G. McFarland, a surveyor, whose family occupied the structure and land for the next century.
During the Civil War, it was a hospital for both Confederate and Union forces. When the house was threatened by development in the late 1950s, citizens in the area formed the Chief John Ross House Association and saved the structure, which had fallen into disrepair, by moving it in 1963 to the other side of Poplar Springs, still on the original McFarland tract. The house became a National Historic Landmark in 1973.
Kay Baker Gaston is a regional historian and former Chattanoogan. For more, visit chattahistoricalassoc.org.