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WILLIAM BRADFORD ROSS was born in Dover, Tennessee and educated in Nashville. He moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1901, achieving prominence as an attorney through a test case that he won before the state Supreme Court on the constitutionality of an anti-gambling law. As a result of the court's decision, all state gambling houses were closed. Ross was elected prosecuting attorney of Laramie County in 1905. Though an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1917, he was nominated and elected in 1922. As governor, he sought to reduce expenditures by consolidating executive departments, and recommended a severance license tax on products removed from the state. He died in Cheyenne after serving twenty-one months of his four-year term.

Sources:

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 20. New York: James T. White & Company.

Sobel, Robert, and John Raimo, eds. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, Vol. 4. Westport, CT: Meckler Books, 1978. 4 vols.

Wyoming State Archives