Tain Museum Image Library

Patricia Ellison (Lady Ross)

Patricia Burnley Ellison of Louisville, Kentucky, a renowned American beauty, became the second wife of Sir Charles Ross of Balnagown in 1901. This picture was taken by a photographer called Klauber in Louisville in about 1900.

Sir Charles, born in 1872, married three times. His first marriage to Winifred Berens was dissolved in 1897. During his subsequent marriage to Patricia Ellison he was cited as co-respondent in numerous divorce proceedings before she divorced him in a blaze of publicity in 1930. His last marriage, in 1938, was to his American secretary, Dorothy Mercado, who inherited Balnagown after his death in 1942.