Sir Thomas McKenzie Ross.....

[PaulB28]

I wonder if someone could help me.

I'm trying to find out when Thomas McKenzie Ross received his knighthood and why he received it.

Thomas was born in Glasgow about 1877 he was the son of Alexander Ross & Jessie Macdonald. He married Esme Colles in dublin in 1920.

According to the commonwealth War Graves website he was knighted by 1944, as he is down as Sir MacKenzie Ross on his son Derek Colles Ross War Grave Record. At that time he lived in Richmond surrey.

I wonder some one could put me in the right direction on how i would find out when he was knighted.

Thanks

Paul

[grannysrock]

Hi Paul

The London/Edinburgh /Belfast Gazettes list people named in the honours list.

Their archive for 1900 - 1997 is online and can be searched at
http://www.gazette-online.co.uk/archive ... ?WebType=0

However, searching this can be a little problematic if the OCR process hasn't converted the name correctly . And that has happened in your fellow's case. Old Capital R's can end up as F or E - a search for Mackenzie Eoss does the trick and should lead you to Issue 33280 , 31 May 1927 .

If your local library provides access to the Times Digital Archive, you should find some details reported there too.


Good Luck

[PaulB28]

Thanks!

This who i was looking for!

Regards

Paul

[DavidWW]

.....snipped ..........
However, searching this can be a little problematic if the OCR process hasn't converted the name correctly . And that has happened in your fellow's case. Old Capital R's can end up as F or E - a search for Mackenzie Eoss does the trick and should lead you to Issue 33280 , 31 May 1927 . .....snipped ......

Nice one =D>

David

[grannysrock]

Paul
Thanks - I'm glad its the right guy !

David
Thanks too - I've been using an OCR tool myself recently (and correcting various conversion errors) . The one I used automatically corrected every word it thought it knew - but I couldn't add words to the dictionary -so all my merks became jerks , my sasines became salines ..... Still OCR tools are a great step forward in allowing searching of scanned documents - what with Google Print and the news that Microsoft will be doing some of the British Library collection , never mind all the online newspaper archives coming on line - us "online genealogy" enthusiasts have many years aimless searching to look forward to.

... I dream ultimately of a tool to automatically transcribe my 17th C "secretary hand" wills ...

I have as I often do , digressed somewhat, I 'll just finish by saying that after finding Mr Mackenzie Eoss , I spent much of the rest of my day off looking for evidence of great grandfathers "Gong" . Armed with the recently acquired knowledge that he had attached letters to his name as early as 1929 , I had a shorter time range to peruse. His name was Sime, but neither the Times, The Scotsman nor the Gazette had yielded anything. I had searched with his forenames only - nothing, misspellings/ name variants - zilch

SO I sat down to go through through all the New Years and Birthday honours lists - and I FOUND HIM. As luck would have it quite quickly - in the Birthday honours of 1919 , a grateful King and country honoured many more persons than usual . And the newspapers responded patriotically by abbreviating the forenames to initials, abbreviating the regiments ( in this case anyway) beyond meaning, and in the case of the Times using the smallest typeface possible - too small for the human eye never mind their OCR tool . I've now double-checked - and he's there in the Scotsman, The Times ( magnified) , and the Gazette of course - but the search engines didn't find him ( ie he had not been Optically Character Recognised) , - in any of these 3 online sources.

Which is very far from Thomas Mackenzie Ross - and I apologise for taking up your space - but (a) I thought I should encourage others who are having similar troubles verifying "known facts" and (b) I'm happy.

Sally

[DavidWW]

Sally

No problem with space!

Neat explanation, thanks, for everyone, of the one of the major pitfalls for the unwary in this activity

David

[peterws]

I am trying to find out any information about my grandfather Sir Thomas Mackenzie Ross. I believe he was born in Glasgow about 1877, married Esme Colles in Dublin in 1920, and was President of the Madras Chamber of Commerce 1924-25 for which he received a knighthood in 1927.

I would be grateful for any information.

Peter Wilson-Smith

[Currie]

Hello Peter, and Welcome to TalkingScot.

There’s an obit for him in the Times of India, 13 Aug 1927, and a photo on the 15th. https://imgur.com/a/gdOdsZk

LEADING FIGURE IN MADRAS LIFE.
DEATH OF SIR M. ROSS.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
MADRAS, August 12.

The death has occurred to-day at Ootacamund of Sir Mackenzie Ross, one of the directors of Best and Company, Madras. He came out to India 25 years ago as an assistant in Best & Co. His early career in the service of the company was spent at the Anglo-French Mills Pondicherry. He took a prominent part in the affairs of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and was its president for a term and represented the Chamber in the last Legislative Council. He was also a member of the Port Trust and a director of the Imperial Bank. There was hardly any high position in the mercantile life of Madras which he had not filled with distinction. He took a great interest in the social life of the city and in sport and was vice-president of Madras Club and a steward of the Race Club.

When he left for Ootacamund for a change about three weeks ago, he was none too well and his doctors had warned him about his heart, but the matter did not appear to be very serious. The news of his death when he was comparatively young and had an even more brilliant career before him, has caused a great shock to his large circle of friends much sympathy is felt for Lady Ross who is at Ootacamund with her two children, a boy aged about four years and a girl aged about one year.


Hope that helps,
Alan