Any people with the surname "Ross" want to progress the "Ross" One Name Project

+11 votes
985 views
Dear all potential collaborators.

I have recently been putting some effort into placing a whole heap of profiles with Ross as a surname on the Ross_Name_Study category page (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Ross_Name_Study) and sending around messages encouraging people to get involved.

In doing this I realised that if a whole heap of people with the surname Ross, made the effort to place the names of their family members, plus a few more other Ross profiles from places they were interested in, this could happen a lot faster.

Already it appears there are some groupings emerging in different parts of Scotland. Ireland, England, and also the USA, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand. It would be good to try and start connecting some more of the dots.

I am already found some merges doing this and a lot of scantily clad profiles which may be merged if a few details were clearer

Is anyone keen to join in?
in The Tree House by Simon Ross G2G6 Mach 2 (29.0k points)
edited by Simon Ross
Ah I see your reply now -- understood!
[[Category: Pennsylvania, Ross Name Study]] will appear as a subcategory on the Ross Name Study category page.  There will be no separate page.  All subcategories will lead to the Ross Name Study category page.  Then you click on 'Pennsylvania, Ross Name Study' and it will take you to a subpage.

If you have created Pennsylviana, Ross Name Study *and nested it within Category: United States, Ross Name Study, which in itself will nest within Category:Ross Name Study*, it will do the same as Category: Devon, Haywood Name Study, nested in Category: England, Haywood Name Study, which is nested within Category:United Kingdom, Haywood Name Study, which is nested within Category:Haywood Name Study.  Look at Category:United Kingdom, Haywood Name Study and there is nothing there except its subsubcategories of England and Wales.
Got you... anyway just one more question..How do you deal with people who have migrated?

I have found a heap of people that were born in Ireland for example (named Ross) but none of them seemed to want to stay. It probably had something to do with potatoes.

Do they go in both categories or just one?

I suppose you could make a new category of people who migrated but it might get a bit complex then.

I see you also have categories which refer to centuries. I suppose this issue would also exist there as well. Which century would you put people in who overlap?
You make up your own categories according to what you are studying.  For instance, you could create Category:Ireland to Kansas, Ross Name Study, or April Birthdays, Ross Name Study, or Purple with Pink Spots, Ross Name Study.  There are official migration categories that fall outside Name Studies; I am just talking about the subcategories you have within your Name Study.  If a person fell into more than one category, you would put both categories on their profile, but I think it might end up looking rather swamped! *grin* You might like to re-read the ONS Project page:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:One_Name_Studies#Other_categorization
Thanks, Ros,

Everyone knows that WikiBot is the most wonderful Wikitreer, but you are up there as well. It appears that you are much faster to respond than the good Bot as well. How long does it usually take to delete or rename a category?

I presume you meant a 'category', rather than a 'profile' (since you deleted a category yesterday).  You have set it, so you can forget it now.  It gets done when it gets done. smiley

Hello Simon;

I have started on this project and added the category to my oldest 2 ancestors.

I then started on some of the many Ross's that I've adopted.

Some of these are messed up and simply saving the tag trips the warning.  ugggg!
Google the history of MacGregor (most of clan forced to change name and leave Scotland) and the Ross clan migrations to northern Ireland.  Lots of history of why so many Scots got pushed to northern Ulster Ireland area which caused some of the Catholic/Protestant riff with the English king taking land.  Many of the exiled Scots later took any boat they could get to the new world.  A whole group of the northern Ireland Scots families - lots of the Ross and Gregg (previously MacGregors) -  joined up with the Quaker movement and came over with the William Penn ships to the New Castle, DE/Philadelphia area.  That started one of the first wave of Scots-Irish immigrants, then there was a second wave later during the Irish potato famine.
Hi Simon, Yes. I am keen to learn more and happy to share what I have on my Ross family.

Simon Ross born 1801 Edinburgh to Alexander and Euphemia Ross. Transported to Tasmania in 1823. Married Ann Baldock in 1834.He died in Richmond Tasmania in 1881.

Currently travelling without computer so cannot easily provide info atm.

I am very keen to connect with people researching  this line.  

Thank you Simon.
I have an uncle, Tam Ross, who was married to Mary Wood and lived in Edinburgh Scotland they lived at 20 lochend road south.

17 Answers

+6 votes
 
Best answer
Yes I am willing to assist as much as I can
by
selected by Simon Ross
+6 votes
Hello Simon;

Yes, I am interested and I have a moderate amount of genealogical experience.  Have also adopted a number of orphan Ross profiles already.  However, my father recently passed away, so I am focused on dealing with this.  Probably a month from now, I can spend some significant time on this project.

Thank-you for starting it.

Sincerely,

Andrew Ross
by Andrew Ross G2G6 Mach 3 (36.0k points)
I was sorry to hear about your loss. My thoughts are with you.
I am sorry to hear this Andrew. Please feel free to get in touch whenever you feel ready.
+5 votes
Hello. I also have some Ross profiles -- my great aunt's husband, and my aunt's husband's family. I'd like to join in, but I also have sims life issues right now. Perhaps in about two weeks I could join in. Thanks for what you're doing.
by Robin Shaules G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
Thank you, Simon, for the star -- appreciated!
+5 votes
I think it's a very good idea. My line is "The Ross Family of New Jersey." George and Constance (Little) Ross, family tradition has it that he was a soldier captured at the Battle of Dunbar about 1650 or Battle of Worchester 1651 then deported to the colonies. I would really like to be able to link this line back across the Atlantic.
by Victoria English G2G6 Mach 7 (72.8k points)
+5 votes
I keen ya. In addition to my line from George and Constance (Little) Ross of New Jersey, I have the book by Peter Coldham, "The King's Passengers to Maryland and Virginia," which has a heap of Ross/Rosse passengers.
by Victoria English G2G6 Mach 7 (72.8k points)
+4 votes
OK,

Just to update everyone, there are now 272 profiles on the Ross One Name Study page now and where possible they have been categorised into nine different countries. The time is now starting to get really ripe for using this start to break down some very Ross like brick walls.

Feel free to start adding more profiles to the ROSS One Name Study. Hopefully Douglas gets back soon.

Thanks all
by Simon Ross G2G6 Mach 2 (29.0k points)
+5 votes
My Ross family originated in Scotland

I would like to find some background on this family that includes the given names of Osullivan and Sullivan and variations of the name
by Charmaine Rosa G2G Crew (710 points)
+5 votes

New update

There are now over 500 Ross profiles added to the project covering 12 countries. I will keep on adding profiles, however, if anyone else would like to join this process, please feel free. 

All you have to do is search for Ross in the search bar at the top of Wikitree and then add "Ross Name Study" and the relevant country Ross Name Studies relevant to the person.

Once there is a critical mass of profiles we can start to look for common migration routes and link them to places. This will help people to improve profiles and hopefully break down a few "brickwalls"

All the best

by Simon Ross G2G6 Mach 2 (29.0k points)
+4 votes
Simon;

I've now added a number of profiles to the project.  These are not all of the profiles that I manage, but a good start...  From what I can tell, it's a mindless task and I can only do so much.

Anyhow, I started poking around the project and noticed that a Douglas Ross started this project and he had his YDNA tested to R-BY11530.  I've also had mine tested to R-CTS2243.  Looking thru the Y Haplotree and we are no where near each other.

I am part of the Family Tree DNA Ross surname project and grouped with just over a dozen other Ross men with our oldest known ancestor among us being a George Ross b 1629.

However, by Family Tree YDNA, I am also matched with men having the surnames Matheson, Kennedy, Hamilton and Grover.  Matheson is the 2nd most common surname among my matches.  So, I joined the Matheson Surname project as well.  In that project, I am matched with  the Loch Alsh Mathesons.  Their oldest ancestor is Murchadh Buidhe, chief of Clan Matheson in the 1500's.  To me, the implication is clear that my ancestors adopted the Ross surname sometime after about the year 1600.

Within the Family Tree Y DNA project there are currently 3 major groups of Ross men.  The largest group appears to have well over 75 men, but no clear leader genealogically speaking... maybe John Ross 1635-1697, or James Ross 1620-1690 MA.

The 2nd largest group is the famous George Aeneas Ross branch with about 50 men.

My group is 3rd largest with just over a dozen.

The 3 large groups are all with the R Haplogroup.  However, there are also groups of Ross men that are in the E, G, H, I and J groups as well as a number of very small groups of men within the R.

So, would like to encourage any interested man with Ross as a surname and especially men with great genealogical records to have their YDNA tested.  It can be at either Family Tree or 23andMe.
by Andrew Ross G2G6 Mach 3 (36.0k points)
Thanks, Andrew,

I currently don't have enough funds to do much DNA outside of autosomal. If I did, there is a maternal line that is a priority for me.

I think aside from adding new profiles as the mood takes me, I have started to look at each ROSS profile from Australia and trace it back to migration to the country. I am starting to find a few common early European migrations and it will be interesting to see how diverse the ROSS families that have migrated to Australia are.

I tried to go diverse with the initial categorization in the ROSS ONS to see just how many different lines there are. I know there is a significant German line and whether the name only originates in Scotland I suppose remains to be seen. Surprisingly, I found some Russian, Ukrainian and South African clusters as well.

In Australia, there was a cluster of ROSS families who settled in NSW over the Great Dividing range from Scotland and another pioneer who originally migrated to Tasmania but then seems to be the one common thread to many ROSS' in Far North Queensland.

I am not sure what the outcome of this will all be, however, I am building my genealogical research skills and learning new things. I find that researching ordinary people can teach you a lot about history and how things emerged in a way that is more accessible and human than textbooks.

I am also sourcing a heap of profiles in the process and improving a lot of profiles in the process
Andrew - which Family Tree Y-DNA test did you use - 37, 67, 111, or 700? It is only a matter of time till I order a Y-DNA test.  My Ross line "starts" in the 1700s in Durness Parish, Sutherland, then in 1816 two of the 7 Ross siblings from Durness arrive in Nova Scotia with children born in Scotland.
Willim - I took the 67 YDNA test with Family Tree.  They placed me into R-M198 Haplogroup, which is not a very specific group.  I recommend taking only the 67 test initially.

I also took an autosomal test at 23&Me.  They placed me into the R-CTS2243 Haplogroup, which is much more specific.

Rather strange that FamilyTree doesn't provide more specific haplogroup information; especially when 23&Me was able to do this.  Suspect this is part of their marketing strategy on FamilyTree's part.

The good thing about FamilyTree is that they have a large database and Family Surname study.  So, FamilyTree will be able to identify your YDNA matches very well, where as 23&Me won't.

By the way, my Father is matched thru Ancestry.com to a distant line of Ross relatives, from near Sutherland as well.  We have yet to ID our common ancestor, but I believe it was a Ross born early 1700 in Ross-Shire.
Hiya, Andrew. The difference in the yDNA haplogroup designations isn't an FTDNA marketing strategy, it's the result of what is actually being tested.

The 23andMe test you took employs the same type of microscope-slide-looking thingy that all other inexpensive direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies currently use; a microarray genotyping chip. It's "programmed" so that when a prepared (read: enzymatically fragmented) sample of DNA is washed over it, certain pieces of the DNA attach to certain points on the microarray.

Those pieces are SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) and they live, based on the particular version of the human genome map being used, at very specific places on specific chromosomes.

All current microarray chips test for a (varied) number of places on both the Y-chromosome (if present) and the mitochondrial DNA molecule (mtDNA). Some don't report it (i.e., AncestryDNA) but they all test for it: it's integral to the chip. The marketing hype, if any, is there: none of the major DTC DNA testing companies actually do multiple tests for your $69 fee. It's one, single test on one, single microarray chip (which itself is reusable for a few different tests, BTW).

All of these chips, in addition to the standard, basic set of yDNA and mtDNA SNPs that come included, are customizable with the ability to program them for, roughly speaking, about 50,000 other SNPs that the testing company can define as they see fit.

For example, 23andMe chose to program their Illumina GSA chip to look at--again being specific to the version of the human genome map in use--position 12,108,819 on the Y-chromosome. That point, among the 58 million on the chromosome, is CTS2243, and its value would be positive for C, or cytosine, for that haplogroup.

Haplogroups, for yDNA and mtDNA, are defined by testing either positive or negative at a specific SNP. R-CTS2243 is, under the dated ISOGG lexicon, R1a1a1b1a3a2a1. With haplogroups, these things are ordered hierarchically, with older variants being "parents" of newer. R-CTS2243's parent is S223/Z287. Z287 is believed to have bifurcated (split off from its ancestral R-Z284)...about 4,300 years ago.

Immensely fascinating to geeks like me, but of only limited value to genealogy.

You can get deep dives into yDNA SNPs at FTDNA, from individual SNP tests and SNP panels (based on high-level haplogroup) all the way up to the flagship BigY-700. The latter, just an aside, has allowed over two dozen test-takers with different surnames (my Williams line among them) to understand that we all shared a common male ancestor somewhere on the eastern edge of the Irish Sea--be it Wales or northwest England or Scotland--most probably sometime between 800AD and 1200AD. Interesting, but of only limited value to genealogy.

Haplogroups and haplotypes are very different things. Haplogroups are useful in genealogy to disprove an hypothesized relationship, but they cannot be used as positive evidence of a relationship. "Haplotype" refers to elements of your very specific genome.

What FTDNA offers in their basic Y-37 through Y-111 tests is an examination of Short Tandem Repeats (STRs). A $69 test on a microarray chip can't do this. An STR is what's called a microsatellite, essentially positions of nucleotides that are repeated up to dozens of times in a row. Think of an office copy-machine...sometimes the machine gets stuck and it stops copying too soon, or it keeps going and generates more copies than you expected.

STRs exist in autosomal DNA as well. In fact, that's what forensic and parentage tests examine. The reason is that STRs are more freely able to mutate. Extra copies at those loci don't upset the applecart. You start messing around with important protein-encoding genes, well...the prognosis for species survival ain't great.

STR mutation can give us a far more proximal idea of relationship than can haplogroup SNPs (again, barring an ultra-deep dive with FTDNA's BigY-700). FTDNA does this STR testing with Sanger Sequencing, different than the wash-and-rinse microarray chip tests. At 111 STR markers, FTDNA predicts that an exact match has a 95% chance of connecting you to a common ancestor five generations ago.

Way better than only a haplogroup 4,300 years ago.
Thank-you Edison;  This is great information and I appreciate you sharing the insight.
+4 votes
I have a fairly large data base of Ross from Lackawanna County Pa.  William Ross was one of the founding father of what is now know as Sranton, Pa.  Supposedly the line came for Scotland.  I haven't been able to prove it.  

I've also been the list owner on Rootsweb of the Ross mailing List, which has years of lines posted.

My father who's grandmother was Ross has done his DNA with Ancestry.  I need to remember to attach his DNA to him here on wikitree.

I would love to help when I can.

Lisa
by Lisa Martin G2G6 Mach 1 (10.3k points)
+4 votes
Hi all, Happy to help out! I've started annotating my Ross family members (maternal) and will keep at it over the summer as time permits.
by S X G2G1 (1.1k points)
+4 votes
I'm in that "scantily clad" profile group.  Lots of Ross history on Ancestry but haven't had time to migrate it over here yet.  Will work on getting it better clothed as I can!
by
+4 votes
Simon - I added the Ross Name Study badge to the profiles of Hugh Ross (1731-1799) and his wife Jean Manson (1738-1831), who raised seven Ross children in the small pre-Clearance settlement of Borley on a knoll overlooking Loch Borralie in Durness Parish, Sutherland, Scotland. Hugh and Jean are my 4x great grandparents. I'm currently building out descendant lines from Hugh Ross and Jean Manson to their 32 grandchildren, with lateral links to siblings, cousins, and in-laws as permitted by evidence from civil and vital records. There are many brick walls at present, so I look forward to collaborative breakthroughs this study may be able to deliver.

Slinte mhath!
by
+3 votes
Happy to help, and added a Ross family from Tain to your Scottish Ross ONS. Have had to fend off inaccurate family additions in the past, so fingers crossed & will keep an eye on them.
by Valerie Willis G2G6 Pilot (114k points)
+2 votes
My Ross Line is from NY. The research and DNA tests have put me in touch with Relatives in the UK so I can say definitively we are a branch from Fermanagh Northern Ireland. The farthest back I can assume would be a grave of Hugh Ross died 1669 in Callow hill cemetery stating he is the son of William Ross (with Lions Rampant on the stone) We have a number of DNA matches to the Ross/Rose line and as far as I know the Rose line claims decent from Godfrey De Ros .We are of the Borderlands Ross clan (the norman Ross as some refer to it).
by
+2 votes

Sure! I've traced back to John William Ross (Ross-7726), emigre from Scotland to Quebec in the 1750s. I haven't done much work on this profile yet, but I will. 

by Ryan Ross G2G6 Mach 3 (39.1k points)
+2 votes
Hi there,

I am very interested in the Southeast US Ross' associated with the Appalachian Mountains. Including Texas. Would it be possible to be a node on the project in that concentration? Either way, I am very interested. Thank you, Megan (Finley-2805)
by Living Finley G2G5 (5.1k points)

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