Isaac Ross (planter)

Isaac Ross
Born	(1760-01-18)January 18, 1760 Orangeburg County, South Carolina
Died	January 19, 1836(1836-01-19) (aged 76) Jefferson County, Mississippi
Resting place	Prospect Hill Plantation, Jefferson County, Mississippi
Occupation	Planter
Title	Captain
Spouse	Jane (Allison) Ross
Children	Margaret Allison Ross Reed Martha B. Ross Jane Brown Ross Wade Isaac Ross Arthur Alison
Parent(s)	Isaac Ross Jean Brown Ross
Relatives	Thomas Buck Reed (son-in-law) Isaac Ross Wade (grandson) Walter Ross Wade (grandson)

Isaac Ross (January 18, 1760 – January 19, 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 Rodney, Mississippi, which operated from 1830 to 1870. After it failed, its campus was sold to the state and used to start Alcorn College, the first land-grant university 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 nearly 200 African-American slaves. 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 West Africa that eventually became part of Liberia. The Mississippi Colonization Society had purchased the land, and in 1847 it became part of the Commonwealth of Liberia.