Eric Layton Ross (1896 - 1945)

Born 25 Apr 1896 in Ohio County, Kentucky, USA

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 30 Oct 1945 at age 49 in Ohio County, Kentucky, USA

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This profile is part of the Ross Name Study.

Biography

Eric (“Eck) Layton Ross was born in Cromwell, Ohio County, Kentucky on April 25, 1896. He was the third of four children born to William Judson Ross (b.1865 - d. 1931) and Altha Jane Curtis (b. 1870 - d. 1947) both of whom were also from Ohio County, Kentucky.

William Judson Ross and eventually his sons including Eck Ross were primarily farmers but also in the lumber business. Cromwell, Kentucky is an old “river town” less than 1/2 mile from Green River which was the main means of transport for logs from rural Kentucky to saw mills down river as far away as Evansville, Indiana on the Ohio River. Cromwell is also located on US 231, a major highway also useful for logging, that was largely built in the 1920’s and 1930’s and extended nearly a thousand miles north-south from Chicago to Florida’s gulf coast.

Eck Ross was 18 years old at the outbreak of WWI in Europe in 1914. He would be drafted three years later when America entered WWI in 1917 and he fought in Europe until the war ended in 1918. We know nothing about Eck Ross’s service in WWI except that he later died at the age of 49 of what was probably brain cancer, possibly caused by exposure to chemical weapons in WWI.

Eck Ross would only have been home from WWI a few years when he and Mary Elizabeth Casebier were married in 1921. They probably knew each other when growing up because the Casebier farm (where Mary grew up) was in Muhlenburg County, Ky on the opposite side of Green River from Cromwell. The newlywed’s lived for a time in Cromwell, Ky at Eck’s family home after they were married but by the time their son Wallace Ross was born in 1923 had relocated to the Greenville / Drakesboro area in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky where Eck Ross apparently worked at the coal mines as a mechanic.

During the depression, Eck Ross moved his family north on two different occasions to find work in the Automotive industry. They lived in Wayne, Michigan from ~1930 where Eck worked for Ford Motor Company until 1945 when Eck was stricken with cancer and he moved his family back to Kentucky before he died October 30, 1945.

Sources

• 1940 USA Federal Census
• 1900 United States Federal Census
• Family Search
• Michigan Death Certificates, 1921-1952," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KFQH-R71 : accessed 22 November 2015), Eck L Ross, 30 Oct 1945; citing Dearborn, Wayne, Michigan, United States, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics, Lansing; FHL microfilm 1,972,947.