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Biography For John Ross

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Author:
Bill Hart

Background:

John D. Ross was born on February 26, 1842 in Lancaster, Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada to Donald and Catherine Ross. He got a job as a bookkeeper with the Ford River Lumber Company in Ford River, MI in 1867.  The company was run by one of Chicago’s better-known lumbermen, E. Wellington Brooks, who seems to have developed a liking for the 24-year old Canadian.  Within two years, the bookkeeper was promoted to manager of the large lumber concern, and became a stockholder as well.  In 1877, Ford River Lumber Company, then being run by Ross, hired another young bookkeeper, 19-year-old Walter Bissell, who soon became indispensable to John Ross, who in turn became his mentor.

Accomplishments:

In 1882, Mr. Ross left Ford River to go to Chicago where, with his own mentor, E. Wellington Brooks, he became a partner in a lumber distribution company.  That partnership branched out into manufacturing in 1883, with the purchase of a mill at Schofield, WI, from C.P. Hazeltine.  Brooks remained in Chicago to handle the firm’s interests there, while Mr. Ross went north to take charge of the Schofield operation.  The Brooks & Ross mill, as it was then known, was a large one, and Mr. Ross sent for his protégé Bissell to help him run it.  Brooks & Ross grew rapidly over the next several years, adding to the Schofield mill another large sawmill at Merrill along with other mills and shingle factories.  Under Mr. Ross’s stewardship, the mill would reach a capacity of 35 million feet annually, specializing in the shipment of lumber to New England markets.

 

On March 31, 1893 the Wisconsin Legislature authorized Mr. Ross “to build and maintain a dam across the Wisconsin River on any lands they may own or control at Rothschild.”  This later led to the incorporation of the Rothschild Water Power Company.

 

In 1901, six of the area’s most influential lumbermen – John Ross, Alexander Stewart, Walter Alexander, Walter Bissell, Charles Winton and Cyrus Yawkey– began to hold regular informal meetings to discuss the common problems that arose from the deteriorating situation in the Wisconsin forests.  The members of this Wausau Group, as they came to be known in the American lumber industry, reached the conclusion that in spite of their free-wheeling, independent tradition, concerted action was necessary if they hope to survive economically.  Having decided to look beyond the Wisconsin borders, their first purchase was 150,000 acres in an Arkansas soft pine belt.  They then went to the south, the west and the pacific northwest.

 

Mr. Ross was married to Miss Anna Louise Winters of Hebron, IL. Their son, John Franklin Ross, succeeded to the presidency of the Brooks & Ross Lumber Company when his father died on March 3, 1917 while golfing in Pasadena, CA. John D. Ross is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Wausau, WI.

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Other Information

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Date of Birth: 2-26-1842

Place of Birth: Canada

Date of Death: 3-3-1917

Place of Death: California

Place of Burial: Pine Grove Cemetery Wausau, WI

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