Ross Girls

I am fascinated by two maiden aunts on my fathers side.  I guess because they must have been strong women, to move to Pasadena California from little Oxford Nova Scotia.  Elspeth went first, arriving in California in 1903 at the age of  18 and Elizabeth later in 1909.  My father's mother was a sister to the Ross girls.

Elsie was a stenographer to a Superior Court Judge for Pasadena, G A. Gibbs.  Lizzie got her teaching certificate in California while living with an aunt and then moved in with Elsie and taught at McKinley School.   There are reports of the girls coming home in the summer to see their family in South Victoria at the old homestead.  It was said that the tall elegant aunts had the latest of fashion (being career girls with money to spend).    One summer, they brought with them a friend, Louis E. Sherwood (1879-1938) a Pasadena photographer.  Family suggested that Sherwood was a beau of one of the girls.  Louis never married.  However, I have a wonderful hand tinted photograph of the flax bales in the Ross farm fields by Sherwood.  Both my grandmother Margaret Ross Thompson and her sister Jean travelled to California and spent some time with the sisters.  It must have been exciting travelling on the train across the US to California.  Elsie died on August 7, 1936.  Elizabeth died three years later on June 26, 1939 at the age of 51. 

I must have gotten my height from Elizabeth who was only 5 foot 3; unusual for the tall Ross family of which my father took after.  I will tell you more about the Ross family and their homestead later.

Believed to be Ross girl in Pasadena.