Isaac Ross (planter), Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Isaac Ross (planter)

American planter

Date of Birth: 18-Jan-1760

Place of Birth: Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States

Date of Death: 19-Jan-1836

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

For the rugby player from New Zealand, see Isaac Ross. Isaac Ross (1760-1836) was an American Revolutionary War veteran and planter from South Carolina who developed Prospect Hill Plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi, for cotton cultivation.
He owned thousands of acres and nearly 160 slaves by 1820. In 1830 Ross was among the major donors and founders of Oakland College, a Presbyterian-affiliated school for young men near Lorman, Mississippi, which operated from 1830 to 1870.
After sale to the state that year, it was renamed by the Reconstruction era-state legislature as Alcorn College and designated as a land-grant university, the first land grant institution for blacks in the United States. Influenced by war ideals and the American Colonization Society, Ross was among the founders of the Mississippi Colonization Society.
Its goal was to repatriate (or transport) freed slaves and free people of color to Africa in order to get them out of the South, where planters believed they threatened slave societies.
In 1835 Ross wrote a will to free his hundreds of African-American slaves (who were overwhelmingly US native-born).
It ordered the sale of his plantation to generate revenue to fund the transport of the freed slaves to Mississippi-in-Africa, the state's colony in what became Liberia in coastal West Africa.
The Mississippi Colonization Society had purchased land there.
In 1847 it became part of the Commonwealth of Liberia.