Charles H. Ross, born August 23, 1870, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was a prominent lumberman and secretary of the H. W. Ross Lumber Company. Moving to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1879, Ross pursued a thorough education, graduating from Sioux Falls High School in 1888 and the University of South Dakota in 1890. He began his career in manual labor within the lumber industry, rising to a leadership role in the family business. Ross also served as a member of the Sioux Falls board of education, held numerous affiliations, including with the Masons and Knights of Pythias, and was an active Congregational church trustee. He married Ellen May Goodrich in 1900, and they had one son, Hiram Earl.
Charles H. Ross.— An article which appeared in the American Lumberman of May 31, 1902, offered an epitomized review of the career of the able young businessman whose name introduces this paragraph, and from the same we make the following excerpt:
Charles H. Ross is an up-to-date young businessman—progressive, efficient, cultured, and gentlemanly. He is no doubt a lumberman because he has followed his desire in the matter; at any rate, he thinks there is no other business like it. Heredity may have had to do with his choice of calling, for not only has his father been a lifelong lumberman, but so also was his grandfather, Hiram J. Ross, who operated a sawmill in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as early as 1837, having gone there in 1835 when the place was settled. His father, Hiram W. Ross, has figured as a well-known lumberman in the northwest, in earlier years running a mill at Colby, Wisconsin, and now known as president of the H. W. Ross Lumber Company, which operates a line of twenty yards in Minnesota and South Dakota, with head office in the Lumber Exchange, Minneapolis. In this company, there are only three stockholders—H. W. Ross, president and treasurer; and his sons, Hiram E., vice-president, and Charles H., secretary.
Charles H. Ross was born in Milwaukee, on the 23d of August, 1870, and moved with his parents to Canton, Dakota, in 1879, Mr. Ross, Sr., choosing this little town as a lookout point. He was of the opinion that the chief town of what was then Dakota territory would be either Yankton or Sioux Falls and that if he lived in neither he could best judge of their comparative merits and development. Following a two years’ residence in Canton, he regarded Sioux Falls as the more promising town and took up his residence there. Charles H. Ross was graduated in the Sioux Falls high school and received his college education in the University of South Dakota, located at Vermillion. Though born in the Badger state, he comes nearly being a South Dakota product. On leaving college, he took a position in a lumber yard, where for four years he did the work of a day laborer. He was ambitious to learn the business and he knew that to do so thoroughly he must begin at the bottom. It is not often that the college graduate takes up manual labor, and that Mr. Ross voluntarily did this is additional evidence as to the sterling material of which he is made. To him, work is work, whether of brain or hand, and one as honorable and necessary as the other. He says that this experience in the yard was of value to him, as he is now familiar with every detail of yard work. He does not hold his present position by reason of being his father’s son, but because, having mastered the business, he is competent to hold it. In 1893, Mr. Ross was made secretary of the company, and two years thereafter became its buyer. In 1900, he turned the buying over to his brother and took the management of the outside yards, with his residence in Sioux Falls. The Ross Company has been highly successful in its selection of local managers. S. H. Hurst, in charge of the Sioux Falls yard, has filled his present position twenty-one years. Another manager has been with the company sixteen years, and several others ten and twelve years each. The confidence must be mutual, for Mr. Ross remarked that he had not a manager in his employ whose honesty he in the slightest degree questioned. “Efficient men well paid” is one of his mottoes.
In association work, Mr. Ross has taken a keen interest. He believes that were it not for the existence of the retail associations, the selling of lumber at a profit that would at all compensate for the use of the capital invested in the business and the time in caring for it would be well-nigh impossible. In 1901, when in Florida, he received a telegram announcing his election as vice-president of the Northwestern Lumbermen’s Association, and he was elected president of the same organization at the annual meeting held in Minneapolis, in January 1902. His election as vice-president was a surprise to him, the selection having been made by the members of that association who are ever on the lookout for capable official timber.
While Mr. Ross has constantly a great amount of work on his hands, he has accepted the conclusion that has been reached by the wisest everywhere, namely, that work is beneficial to only one side of man’s nature. As a counterbalance, there must be recreation, and fortunately, the idea has been imbibed by Mr. Ross while he is yet a young man. Mr. Ross is an enthusiast with the rod and gun. He hunts in the Black Hills and in Montana, and ten years ago, on a hunting trip, crossed the plains with President Roosevelt. He has hunted moose in Canada, deer in northern Wisconsin, and even alligators in the south. In 1899, he spent four months in Europe, visiting eleven countries and bringing back with him a boundless fund of information concerning people and governments.
The domestic animals find in Mr. Ross a friend and admirer, these animals being much in evidence at his beautiful home in Sioux Falls. He is the owner of Hulda R., a pacing mare that has a mark of 2:18 1-2; a high-bred Jersey cow has the run of his yard, and a bird dog for which he has repeatedly refused into the hundreds welcomes him when he comes from town. He also has pens of high-scoring barred Plymouth Rock chickens. Mr. Ross is interested in music to so marked a degree that he visits New York and remains through the season of grand opera. Art also interests him. On his European trip, he saw twelve of the most famous pictures in the world, traveling three hundred miles to see one of them. While neither wanting nor seeking political favors, he joins with the men who control politics in order to have as good men as possible in office. Mr. Ross is a type of the young businessman that is altogether too rare—a man who is good to himself and good to others. Plenty of dollars roll his way, and they are neither miserly hoarded nor senselessly squandered.
The foregoing paragraphs indicate quite adequately the position which our subject holds in the business world, and it should be noted that he stands essentially at the head of one of the most important lumbering enterprises in South Dakota, while he is held in the highest confidence and esteem in the city and state in which the major portion of his life has been passed. In a recapitulatory way, it may be stated that he was graduated from the Sioux Falls high school in 1888, while he was graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1890. He is at the present time a member of the board of education of his home city and is thoroughly public-spirited in his attitude, his political allegiance being given to the Republican party. He and his wife hold membership in the Congregational church of Sioux Falls, and he is also serving as a member of its board of trustees. Fraternally, he has completed the circle of York Rite Masonry, is identified with the Knights of Pythias, and is an enthusiastic affiliate of the great social organization of lumbermen, the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoos.
On the 24th of October 1900, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Ross to Miss Ellen May Goodrich, of State Center, Iowa, and they are the parents of one child, Hiram Earl, who was born on the 8th of August 1901. On another page of this work appears a sketch of the life of the subject’s father, and to the same reference may be made for further ancestral data.
Source: Robinson, Doane, History of South Dakota: together with mention of Citizens of South Dakota, [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen, 1904.