Sherry Ross (February 11, 1824January 4, 1867) was an Oregon pioneer and the namesake of Ross Island and Ross Island Bridge in Portland, Oregon.

Ross arrived in the Oregon Country in 1845, part of a train of 200 wagons that branched off of the Oregon Trail via the Meek Cutoff.Ross was counted among the immigrants of 1845 by Hubert Howe Bancroft, see footnote 30, Ross filed a provisional land claim in 1846 on a parcel of roughly 400 acres surrounded by the Willamette River, a location later known as Ross Island.

In 1851 Ross married Rebecca Deardorff, an 1850 immigrant to the Oregon Territory.In 1938, an oral history project sponsored by the Works Progress Administration recorded a conversation with Cyrus B. Woodworth, grandson of the Rosses. He believed the marriage occurred because Deardorff wanted to own an island and Ross already had the claim. See

Ross operated a dairy farm on Ross IslandSee Tyler Woodward in and was listed as a livery stable owner at 165 First Street in early Portland.

See also History of Portland, Oregon

References

Further reading The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811-1912, Volume 1, by Joseph Gaston