Aaron Ladner Lindsley was a Presbyterian missionary and clergyman who was active in New York State, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Alaska. He was born March 4, 1817 in Troy, New York, and educated at Marion College (Missouri), Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.), Troy Polytechnic Institute, Union Theological Seminary, and the Princeton Theological Seminary. After being ordained in New York City in 1846 he married Julia West (1827-1905) and went to Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he helped to found Carroll College. Returning to the east he settled for a time at South Salem, Westchester County, New York, where he served as a clergyman. After receiving a doctorate in New York City in 1868, he traveled overland to Oregon, where he took the post of pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, a post he held until 1887. Among many missionary activities he worked to establish missions in the Alaska Territory, most notably at Fort Wrangell in 1879. In 1868 he moved to San Francisco, where he became professor of practical theology at the San Francisco Theological Seminary.
Among the eight children of Aaron and Julia Lindsley was a daughter, Emily Mary, an author and genealogist, who married James Thorburn Ross (1858-1957) in Portland in 1889. Ross was a native of Lanarkshire, Scotland who came to New York City in 1879. There he worked for the Interchange Publishing Company and studied singing. In 1884 he planned to relocate to Devil's Lake, North Dakota, and open a hardware store with his brother John, but instead the two traveled to Portland, Oregon. There James worked for printer George Himes and eventually developed a successful system for indexing real estate titles. In 1887 he helped to found the Real Estate Title and Trust Company in Portland, becoming president in 1906. In addition to banking he was involved in many real estate ventures, including the town of Irrigon, the Holladay Park and Mount Tabor additions on Portland's east side, and Westover Terrace near the site of the Lewis and Clark exposition. In the aftermath of the panic of 1907, Ross's firm, then called the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, was accused of using public school funds, which had been deposited with them, for private purposes. Ross was convicted of criminal activity and sentenced to a prison term, but after a lengthy appeal process and entreaties from prominent citizens he was pardoned by Governor Oswald West in 1913. His remaining years were spent in private law practice and civic and church activities.
From the guide to the Lindsley-Ross family papers, 1779-1959, (Oregon Historical Society)
