Sir John Ross

[Jordan Cutter]

I'm looking for a missing link within Sir John's family tree, I have reason to believe that Sir John Ross is my grandfather 6 generations back. The only missing link that I cannot seem to find is his daughter who married someone with last name of Simmons, I've done alot of research on Sir John Ross and I can't seem to find anything else

[hurworth]

You may have some luck with this Facebook group, but it would make it easier for Rootschatters to help if you would provide details of the dates, names and locations four and five generations back which you think connect to this family.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/508965915893610/

[Forfarian]

Having just read through this thread, this web site https://ecclegen.com/ is a goldmine for finding out about presbyterian ministers.

It is as complete as list as possible of all such ministers, irrespective of which particular presbyterian denomination they belonged to, and it includes links to relevant entries in Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae (FES) and the corresponding books about the clergy of the free churches as far as they exist.

(PS Digression - probably only of interest to language nerds. I looked into it, and Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae is a really interesting phrase. A classical Roman, say Cicero, would have been able to read it and interpret it but not to understand it! Fasti, as Gadget says, means register of magistrates etc. Ecclesia means church, but it's not an original Latin word - it's from Greek meaning an assembly, borrowed into Latin (presumably after classical Roman times when there were no churches) to mean a congregation. Ecclesiae is in the genitive case, so it means 'of the church'. Scoticus is the adjective meaning 'Scottish', and is of course a much later invention because there was no such entity as Scotland in Roman times, which is why Cicero would not have been able to understand it. It has to agree with its noun and be in the genitive case, hence the ending in '-ae' but I do not know why Hew Scott used Scoticanae rather than Scoticae, which would have been the simpler form. Perhaps by analogy with Anglicanus, a similarly invented Latin word meaning 'Anglican'? Anyway, put it all together and it translates as 'Register of the Scottish Church'. Apologies if I have bored anyone, but I find language and its development absolutely fascinating.)

(PPS Further digression. The foregoing prompted me to wonder where the word 'kirk' or 'church' comes from. It appears that it is also of Byzantine (i.e. post-classical) Greek origin, from the phrase κυριακὸν δῶμα kyriakon doma which means something like 'house of the Lord'. It was apparently borrowed into German on the lower Rhine from the 4th century AD, and developed into the Germanic word we use today. 'Doma' was also borrowed into German with the specific meaning of a cathedral as opposed to an ordinary church.)

I am glad I did Latin at school, and I wish I had done Greek as well.