Ross, Edmond Gibson, 1826-1907

Ross was born in Ashland, Ohio, on December 7, 1826, the third of fourteen children born to Sylvester Ross Sr. and Cynthia (Rice) Ross. He was educated locally and at age 11 was apprenticed as a printer at the Huron, Ohio, Commercial Advertiser. In 1841 he moved to Sandusky, Ohio, to join the staff of the Sandusky Mirror, which was owned by his brother Sylvester. For several years in the late 1840s and early 1850s, Ross was employed as a journeyman printer and typesetter, traveling throughout Ohio and to several nearby states to accept temporary work whenever it was available. A Democrat who opposed slavery, in 1852, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked on first the Milwaukee Free Democrat and then the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel. In 1854, Ross was one of several Milwaukee residents who came to the aid of Joshua Glover, an escaped slave who had been recaptured and was being held at the local jail. The group stormed the jail, freed Glover, and enabled his escape to Canada. At the founding of the Republican Party, Ross' anti-slavery leanings caused him to join the new organization.

An opponent of slavery, during the 1850s dispute over whether to admit Kansas to the union as a free state or a slave state, Ross moved to Topeka, Kansas, as did several of his family members, who were also opponents of slavery. The dispute sometimes resulted in violence, and Ross joined the antislavery side's militia. He became a leader of the free state movement as publisher of the Topeka Tribune from 1856 to 1858 and founder of the Kansas State Record in 1859. He joined the board of directors of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and was one of its chief promoters. In 1859, Ross was elected a delegate to the Kansas constitutional convention of 1859 to 1861.

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