Why doesn the first Mrs. Murrell (Minerva Ross) look very Cherokee?
Minerva was 1/16 Cherokee. We have no photographs of her, only a portrait; so she may not look exactly like the portrait. Often times Eastern portrait painters did not include the subject’s Native American attributes in their portraits. The portrait of Lewis Ross, Minerva’s father, does not display the features found in his photographs. Also, Minerva’s mother, Frances “Fanny” (Holt) Ross, was not Native American, so Minerva could look like that side of the family. In spite of prejudice, inter-marriage was common between Cherokees and white Americans/Europeans. Fanny came from an affluent old Virginia plantation family when she married Lewis Ross, whose family background was a mixture of Cherokee and Scottish ancestry.
