Rainy Day River Walk ... Thinking About John Ross

 It has been very rainy and it rained all morning. But in the middle of the afternoon Sheila reported that a look at weather.com indicated a few hours of a break in the rain, so off we went on about an hour's walk. We followed the levee to Second Avenue then turned back to the Ross Bridge. We crossed to the Ellen Axson Wilson Statue and then upstream to the end of the boardwalk and back. The light was nice on the statue as we walked by the second time so I snapped a picture. 

Back across the bridge I noticed the brass plaque...

The small brass marker on the west end of the Ross bridge remembers John Ross.

...and started wondering again exactly where John Ross's home had been --- and where his daughter might be buried*." 

 John Ross, the namesake of the bridge, ...

A young John Ross

...came to "Head of Coosa" which later became Rome, Georgia, in 1827. He owned property on the West Bank of the Oostanaula River near where this bridge is now and established a ferry downstream from his fellow Cherokee chief and ferry operator Major Ridge. 

A decade later, in 1838, Ridge returned from a trip to find a stranger at his home. The guy identified himself as Stephen Carter, the new owner, thanks to to Georgia's lottery of Cherokee property, of what had been Ross's home and land -- and he had the papers from the State of Georgia to prove it. Homeless, Ross discovered his wife Quatie...

Elizabeth Quatie Brown Ross

...had found relatives to stay with. On the next February 1 Quatie would die of pneumonia traveling in exile through Arkansas. Ross would continue to lead the Cherokees until his death in 1866, still negotiating for his people now with President Andrew Johnson's administration.

I wonder if the school systems in Florida are even allowed to teach this history.

Walking back home via the west levee along the Oostanaula I took a grey sky picture of City Clock standing framed by the County courthouse on the north and the Forum on the south.

                                                      

-----------------------

* I have read/been told that Ross and Quatie had a daughter who died during their time at Head of Coosa and who was buried on their property here. Does anyone have any documentation of this story?