John Ross’s Home, Near a Crossing Point Between Worlds

From Teddy Harris, Mayor of Rossville, Georgia:

“I am the Mayor of Rossville and I took this photo this past February.”

This gorgeous photo offers some sense of what it might have looked like to approach John Ross’s house in the early 1800’s. (Taken from another angle, a photo might show a coin laundry or even the back of the modern-day Rossville post office.) Documents and scientific study of the logs indicate that this house, which has been moved slightly from its original location, was Ross’s home in the years that he began operating a ferry across the Tennessee River a short distance away. The settlement on the south side of the river was called Ross’s Landing, and for a time it was a crossing between worlds. One side of the river was the Cherokee Nation. The other side was what Ross called the “whiteside,” an area of white settlement. Today’s Ross’s Landing goes by a different name: Chattanooga, Tennessee.