Edmund G. Ross: Sandusky Student, U.S. Senator

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Edmund G. Ross is best remembered as the Senator who cast the deciding vote against the conviction of President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868. He is also one of the Senators about whom former President John F. Kennedy wrote, in his best selling book, Profiles in Courage.

Edmund G. Ross was born in Ashland, Ohio in 1826. When he was 11 years old, he apprenticed as a printer at the Commercial Advertiser, an early newspaper in Huron, Ohio. By 1841, he had moved to Sandusky, where he worked at the Sandusky Mirror, a newspaper owned by his brother Sylvester Ross. He was a longtime opponent of slavery, and served in the 11th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry during the Civil War. He served as U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1866 to 1871.

Hewson Peeke included in his book The Centennial History of Erie County, Ohio (Cleveland Press Co., 1925) a letter from C. M. Eldis, which listed the names of the directors, instructors, and students in the class of Sandusky High School for the academic year 1845-1846. Edmund G. Ross was one of the 1846 graduating students, along with Richard Rush Sloane, later a Mayor of Sandusky, who was known as Rush Sloane in his adult life. Most likely the students who graduated in 1846 attended classes at the former Academy Building in Sandusky, which was located next to Emmanuel Church.

A program from an Exhibition by Sandusky school students in February of 1846 lists the names of both Edmund Ross and Richard Rush Sloane. Edmund’s oration was on the topic of Capital Punishment, and young Sloane’s topic was The Nineteenth Century.

Each of these young men went on to make history, Edmund Ross on a national level, and Richard Rush Sloane in the community of Sandusky. Rush Sloane was known as an ardent abolitionist. His paper on “The Underground Railroad of Sandusky” appeared in the July 1888 issue of the Firelands Pioneer.

Many students who graduated from Sandusky High School went on to make important contributions to our community, state and country. It shows us that early Sandusky leaders placed a great value on education.

James Ross, Educator and Author

From 1916 to 1933, James Ross was a history teacher at Sandusky High School. For several of those years, he also served as the faculty treasurer of the athletic department. Prior to moving to Sandusky, Ohio, Mr. Ross had been an educational administrator at West Chester Schools, Adams Township Schools in Champaign County, and Fort Recovery Schools in Mercer County, Ohio. An excerpt from History of Mercer County, Ohio (Biographical Publishing Co., 1907) had the following description:

Mr. Ross is not only a superintendent of marked executive ability and good judgment, but a teacher of force and power. He makes no radical change but lays a firm foundation and then progresses. Unassuming in his ways he has the ability, by his devoted, unselfish interest in his pupils, to inspire them with noble ideals and to keep them firmly as friends of the school, and through the pupils he seldom fails to reach the parent. He is an educator in the highest sense of the word.

An article in the December 21, 1940 issue of the Sandusky Star Journal stated that it was largely through the efforts of Mr. Ross that when Sandusky High played Findlay High School’s football team on Thanksgiving Day in 1925, it was the largest crowd that ever attended an SHS football game up to that point in the school’s history. 

In 1930, Mr. Ross wrote a book, The Heart of Democracy: The American Public Schools. An autographed copy of this title is now in the collections of the Follett House Museum.

The Sandusky Register of February 15, 1931 published excerpts of several positive reviews of the book, which had gained national attention. E.J. Jensen, field secretary of Adelbert College, said “It’s the first ‘meaty’ book on education that I have read with a feeling of intense enjoyment instead of from a sense of duty. Its style is so lucid and entertaining that it should have a very widespread appeal.” 

After his retirement in 1933, Mr. Ross and his wife Winnie moved to Brooklyn, New York, living with a son. Mr. Ross died on December 14, 1940. Funeral services were held at a Brooklyn crematory, and his ashes were taken to Fort Recovery, Ohio for burial.

Thoughts Preserved in a Scrapbook by M.F. Cowdery

A large scrapbook that once belonged to prominent Sanduskian M.F. Cowdery is preserved at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center. The scrapbook contains a compilation of biographical sketches, engravings, poems, and religious passages, many from newspapers. Some entries are patriotic and others are written from an abolitionist perspective. Many articles and poems are sentimental in nature, bringing to mind thoughts of home and family. Below is a portion of a tribute to Dean Richmond, a former New York Central Railroad official who died in 1866.

 

Echoes is a poem written by Marian Ross, and originally appeared in a New York newspaper in October of 1866.

The tribute to General James McPherson, a native of Clyde, Ohio who died during the siege of Atlanta in the Civil War, was first published in the Memphis Avalanche. The article points out that General McPherson had been brave and gallant, even though it was written by someone from the South.

This poem was dedicated to “the cause of truth by Datus Kelley and his wife” by Mrs. Frances D. Gage on October 23, 1861. Kelley was the namesake for Kelleys Island, where he acquired and developed land, and lived from 1836 to his death in 1866.

Marcellus F. Cowdery was superintendent of schools for Sandusky City Schools in the 1860s.

He was also associated with the Western School Supply Company, which was a forerunner of the American Crayon Company. It is interesting to see what types of articles were important to an early educator in our community in the nineteenth century.

Exhibition of the Students of the Sandusky City High School in 1846

On Friday evening, February 6, 1846, students of the Sandusky City High School gave an Exhibition. Orations and compositions were presented throughout the evening. Julia Farwell, the daughter of Sandusky’s first Mayor, Moors Farwell, gave a composition entitled “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” An oration on the topic of slavery was presented by Francis E. Parish, the son of well-known Sandusky lawyer and abolitionist, F. D. Parish. Mr. F.D. Parish had been elected as one of the school directors in 1838.

Annette Tilden, seen below with her young son, after she had married Isaac Mills, was the daughter of pioneer physician, Dr. Daniel Tilden. Annette gave a talk on “Humbled Pride.”

Two of the students listed on the last page of the program are of interest. Edmund G. Ross went on to become a U.S. Senator for the state of Kansas. He is known for casting the vote which acquitted Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868, and he was one of the subjects of the book Profiles in Courage, the book co-authored by John F. Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen in 1956. During the 1846 Exhibition, Edmund G. Ross gave an oration on capital punishment.  Richard R. Sloane, better known as Rush Sloane, gave his oration on the topic of the nineteenth century. Rush Sloane became a railroad official, Mayor of Sandusky, and was the owner of the Sloane House, a hotel that stood in Sandusky from 1881 until well into the twentieth century

It is interesting to note that the program for the Exhibition was published by D. Campbell and Sons, who also published the local newspaper in Sandusky. To read more about the early history of schools in Sandusky, see “Local School History of the City of Sandusky, from 1838 to 1872 Inclusive,” written by M.F. Cowdery in 1876, and housed in the Schools Collection of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.