Clarksville Chronicle

LIFE AND TIMES OF ELDER REUBEN ROSS.
From the Nashville Union & American.

We have been permitted, through the courtesy of its accomplished author, Mr. James Ross, of Montgomery county, to look over the manuscript of a forthcoming work which he has in preparation upon the life and times of his father. The scenes and incidents which he reproduces of the early settlements on the Cumberland are as vivid as life, and carry us back, in imagination, to the time immediately succeeding that which was characterized by the tomahawk and war-whoop of the Indian.

Few men have left a more indelible impress upon Middle Tennessee and Southern Kentucky, than the subject of this memoir. Born in North Carolina, during the trying scenes of the Revolution, his youth was passed upon a farm where he distinguished himself for patient industry and careful attention to all matters appertaining to that business. Bold in every object of his pursuit, the same zeal that afterwards distinguished him in his chosen work was shown in every undertaking of his youth. Decision of character then, as afterwards, was his predominant trait. Professing religion, he soon entered the ministry, and to widen the field of his influence, removed with his family, about the year 1807, to the then almost unsettled State of Tennessee. After undergoing many privations, perils and hardships, both by flood and by land, he finally reached the county of Stewart, where he purchased a few hundred acres of land and settled his family. Scarcely had he made the necessary improvements for sheltering his family, and gathered some of the comforts of civilization about him, when a prior and adverse claim was set up against his land, which was sustained by the courts, and he found that all the time, labor and money he had expended in improving, was lost. Removing from thence, he settled in Montgomery county, on Spring Creek, where he continued to reside for nearly half a century, and died at an advanced age, beloved and deeply regretted by the whole country.

It is no easy matter at the present day, when to be connected with some religious denomination is the rule, and not the exception, and when respect for ministers of the Gospel is a part of the education of our children, to appreciate the difficulties and dangers which these pioneer preachers encountered. Enduring every species of hardship; riding for days and weeks through regions almost uninhabited, and carrying in their saddle-bags provisions for their journeys, trusting to the charitable covering of trees for shelter against rain and storms and dews of the night, receiving but little sympathy from the rude settlers who thought more of hunting, fishing and drinking than of religion; without pay from their churches, and often without property; with families dependent on them for support, which had to be made by on!si... the earth at intervals snatched from the visits to their different churches; sometimes taunted and cursed by the populace for the "faith that was in them," the objects of ingratitude, prejudice and persecution-truly those pioneers in the cause of Christ must have had much livelier faith in the promises of their Master than is shown at the present day. Father Ross passed unscathed through all these trials, not only without repining, but with cheerfulness. Nay, more, he even gloried in his sufferings. In the performance of his Master's duty there was with him no languor, no inaction. To him the command had been given, "Go, preach the Gospel to every creature." With this imperious mandate no secular duties were allowed to interfere. He accepted as a literal truth, "Take up the Cross." Neither burning suns nor winter's cold, nor hurricanes, nor floods, nor threats, "nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come," were able, for one moment, to deter him from what he considered to be his duty. He acted in the belief that duties are ours; events are God's.

As a thinker, Father Ross was distinguished for his boldness and originality. His allegorical interpretations of many of the passages in the Bible were as beautiful as they were original and plausible. Earnestness, however, was his marked excellence. His delivery was deeply impressive, and the writer distinctly remembers the awe and silence which pervaded and overshadowed an assembly when he arose to preach. Venerable in mien and majestic in his utterances, his audience was always dismissed solemnly impressed with the power of Divine truth. His sermons were usually brimful of thought, and no one who heard him once ever failed, when an opportunity presented, of hearing him a second time. Such was Elder Reuben Ross: Nomen venerabile et preclarum.

It is not our intention, however, at present to enter into a minute estimate of his character as exemplified either by the purity of his life, simplicity of purpose, or the splendor of his success in the ministry. Our object is merely to direct attention to the fact that a truthful and appreciative memoir of his life and services as a minister of the Baptist Church will soon be given to the world by one who brings no qualification for the task, an intimate acquaintance with the men and things of which he writes; a happy memory for details; a thorough education; a high appreciation of the humorous and the pathetic, tempered with a taint of veneration and love for the subject of his memoir. We have been permitted to extract from the work an account of the Rev. Isaac Tildwine, a good but eccentric minister, who was a contemporary with Father Ross. It is only one of the many interesting characters drawn in the work, and for the rescuing of whose memory from oblivion we shall have to thank Mr. James Ross.

A Local Table,
To aid farmers in arriving at accuracy in ascertaining the amount of land in different fields under cultivation, the following table is given by an agricultural contemporary:
"5 yards wide by 198 yards long contains one acre; 20 yards wide by 242 yards long contains 1 acre; 40 yards wide by 121 yards long contains 1 acre; 220 feet wide by 198 feet long contains 1 acre; 110 feet wide by 395 feet long contains one acre; 60 feet wide by 726 feet wide by 726 feet long contains one acre; 10 yards wide by 484 yards long contains 1 acre."