Anna Maria Ross.
- Her parentage and family -- early devotion to works of charity and benevolence -- praying for success in soliciting aid for the unfortunate -- the “black small-pox” -- the conductor's wife -- the Cooper Shop Hospital -- her incessant labors and tender care of her patients -- her thoughtfulness for them when discharged -- her unselfish devotion to the good of others -- sending a soldier to his friends -- “he must go or die” -- the attachment of the soldiers to her -- the home for discharged soldiers -- her efforts to provide the funds for it -- her success -- the walk to South Strest -- her sudden attack of paralysis and death -- the monument and its inscription
Anna Maria Ross, the subject of this sketch, was a native of Philadelphia, in which city the greater part of her life was spent, and in which, on the 22d of December, 1863, she passed to her eternal rest. It was a very beautiful life of which we have now to speak — a life of earnest activity in every work of benevolence and Christian kindness. She had gathered about her, in her native city, scores of devoted friends, who loved her in life, and mourned her in death with the sentiments of a true bereavement. Miss Ross was patriotic by inheritance, as well as through personal loyalty. Her maternal relatives were largely identified with the war of American Independence. Her mother's uncle, Jacob Root, held a captain's commission in the Continental army, and it is related of her great grandmother that she served voluntarily as a moulder in an establishment where bullets were manufactured to be used in the cause of freedom. Her mother's name was Mary Root, a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Her father was William Ross, who emigrated early in life from the county of Derry, Ireland. There may have been nothing in her early manifestations of character to foreshow the noble womanhood into which she grew. There remains, at any rate, a small record of her earliest years. The wonderful powers which she developed in mature womanhood possess a greater interest for those who know her chiefly in connection with
