(1815 or 1816-31 Dec. 1904), judge. (William A. Ross) Born at Ardross, Ross-shire, Scotland. Parents: Donald Ross and his wife Janet Aird. His early education was in Scotland. It has been suggested that he was the William Ross, later a barrister, who was one of the students of the Rev. Hugh Urquhart at Cornwall, but the student in question could also have been William Ross, later a Cornwall lawyer (see James Dingwall). The subject of the present article studied at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont. (B.A., 1855). He was headmaster when the Williamstown school was officially raised to grammar school status in the mid-1840s, and he ranks as its first principal. He taught at Williamstown from 1840 until at least 1846, and afterwards was headmaster of grammar schools at L’Orignal and Ottawa. Turning to a new occupation, he was called to the bar of Ontario in 1859, and of Quebec 1868. In Ottawa he was the law partner of the Hon. R.W. Scott, and also was a law partner or otherwise associated in the law with McLeod Stewart. William Aird Ross was judge of the county court of Carleton County from 1874 till his retirement in 1897. He was married in 1852 to Jessie (or Janet) Gillespie Durie (d. May 1893).

Morgan (1898) 890, 971 * Whyte, i, 380 * Harkness 347 * Ross & Cameron, 2-3 * Hugh Urquhart : Pringle 245; Ross & Cameron * mentioned, Dictionary of Canadian Biography XIII, 753