In 1875 Gross returned to Louisville for a meeting of the AMA, where he was re-elected president and entertained lavishly, even being presented by the physicians of Kentucky with two thoroughbred horses. He made his final visit to Kentucky two years later, in 1877, when he gave a memorial oration in honor of the famous surgeon Ephraim McDowell in Danville. Gross was presented with the original door knocker from McDowell's home; for a time the gift resided in the collection of the Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, but has since been returned to the McDowell house in Danville, where it is kept under glass.