About Us

Enoch Elijah Ross and Adell Bryant were married on November 27, 1921 by Rev. J. P. Starling in Rusk County, Texas. The couple endured the typical trials for blacks in the Southern countryside, including having to flee from the piney woods of East Texas where they were born, chased by a band of men and boys with sticks and rocks who called Enoch "an uppity n----- with a Ford Model T car."

Traveling the red dirt roads away from their home, Big Mama and the couple's first four kids laid under cover in a wagon driven by their cousin. Papa drove the opposite route in the popular Model T car that he possibly bought with his earnings from bootlegging and singing and playing piano in blues joints. His cousins later told him that had he gone his usual route he would have found the mob lying in wait. With their belongings left behind, the Rosses settled 150 miles away on Griffith League Ranch in Chisholm, TX in Rockwall County during the Great Depression.

 

The family was living in Chisholm in 1930 and 1940, according to Census records, so their move there had to have occurred in 1929 or 1930 since family lore says Enoch Jr. was a babe when the family became sharecroppers at Griffith League. Jr. was born in Jan 1929. The stock market crashed nine months later in Oct and may have had an impact on the hostilities toward a black man with a nice car.

A Boy Scouts retreat site today, Griffith League was a former slave plantation owned by John Summerfield Griffith, a Confederate Army lieutenant colonel and later U.S. Congressman. We may never know if Papa and Big Mama knew that the land was a former slave plantation. It is certain that several or maybe all of their children didn't. Corene, Faye, Pearlene, and Lucille were very upset when they learned about it after Lucille's daughter Naomi unearthed it while doing genealogy research.

Their brother James, who took Naomi on a tour of East Texas to conduct the research, was very close to Papa and would have been the one to know if his dad knew. James was just as shocked as everyone to learn the true history of their beloved farm. Another surprise was learning that the black and white Rosses in East Texas were on good terms in 1998, holding reunions and choosing to avoid letting their unfortunate history divide their roots.

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Through the 1930s and early 1940s, Papa served as the farm "straw boss" or assistant foreman on the farm and as pastor of Griffith League Church of God in Christ. Enoch and Adell also became Pentecostal evangelists traveling back to East Texas and beyond, leading many souls to Jesus Christ. Bryant cousins living on the Mt. Enterprise land where Big Mama was born have very fond members of Papa's powerful preaching and of his wife singing and dancing in the Spirit.

The Ross family moved to Dallas in the 1940s after paying off their farm debt using savings from their son James' military allotment. They used part of the funds to buy two homes in Dallas for themselves (home page pic) and James' family.

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Enoch had one more son from a previous relationship, while Adell had one son and two daughters by two other men, including her first husband. Today, the couple have hundreds of grandkids, great-grandchildren, and beyond who have branched out worldwide, especially in Texas and California. They have achieved great successes in education, business, entertainment, law, and more, many continuing their legacy as Christian pastors and believers.

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Click below to learn more about our beloved patriarch and matriarch:

Enoch

Adell

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