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Dillon L. Ross

 

DILLON L. ROSS is an accomplished lawyer, member of the bar of Council Bluffs for many years, and his own work as a lawyer supplements the professional record of his father, also an early member of the Council Bluffs bar.

Mr. Ross was born at Council Bluffs, December 1, 1869. The family were among the earliest settlers on the eastern side of the Missouri River, coming here before the building of the first railroads. His grandfather was Amos Ross, a native of New Jersey, who moved to Ohio and spent his life as a farmer. Lewis W. Ross was born in Ohio, finished his education in Miami University and began the practice of law. He came out to Iowa and practiced for two years at Lewis and in 1861 settled at Council Bluffs and for over forty years was an honored member of the profession in the southwestern corner of the state. He was a great scholar and from 1881 to 1887 was a law teacher at the University of Iowa. He also served in the State Senate, was a leader in the Republican party and a member of the Congregational Church. He died in 1902. His wife Zoe M. Brown, who died in 1914, was also born in Ohio, daughter of Simeon Brown, a native of the same state and a minister of the Presbyterian and later of the Congregational Church. Lewis W. Ross and wife had a family of five children, four now living: Mrs. Hester R. Moon, a widow at Council Bluffs; Miss Edith W., of Council Bluffs; Miss Anna Z., who taught in the city schools for a number of years; and Dillon L. Dillon L. Ross was educated at Council Bluffs, spent two and a half years in the University of Iowa and studied law with his father. He was admitted to the bar in 1891, and has been successfully engaged in the varied routine of the work of his profession for nearly forty years. During the first eleven years he was with his father, was alone in practice from 1902 to 1913, and then became associated with another eminent member of the Iowa bar, Emmet Tinley, in a firm that is reputed to have some of the most valuable law practice in the state, representing a number of railroads and other corporations. Mr. Ross for many years has specialized as an authority on real estate law.

He is a member of the Pottawattamie County and Iowa State Bar Associations. He is a past exalted ruler of Lodge No 531, B. P. O. Elks, is a member of the Country Club and enjoys the game of golf. His wife is a Congregationalist.

He married in 1894 Reta M. Miller, who was born in Missouri, grew up in Illinois, her father, Robert D. Miller, being a minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Mr. and Mrs. Ross have four children: Harold M., in the real estate and farm loan business at Council Bluffs; Lewis W., connected with a bank at Oakland, Iowa; Dillon L., in the real estate business at Park Ridge, Illinois; and Miss Doris, at home. The sons Harold and Lewis were overseas during the World war, Harold being in the Hospital Corps and reaching France in December, 1917, while Lewis went overseas in September, 1917.

~ source: A Narrative History of The People of Iowa, Edgar Rubey Harlan, LL. B., A. M., Chicago and New York, 1931

~ transcribed and contributed by:  Debbie  Clough Gerischer, Iowa History Project