Mary Jeffrey

Mother of John Gerald Short and great-grandmother of Dick Ellingwood. She married John Short at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Cobourg, on 7 January 1836, with her brother Andrew Jeffrey as a witness; Andrew (1800-1863), born at Foulden, Berwickshire, was a hardware merchant of Cobourg, an elder of its Presbyterian church from 1827, and its mayor in 1852 (WikiTree, from Skinner). Her daughter Jane was born at Cobourg that November. Widowed in 1858, she was at Cobourg with her children in the 1861 census and later at Woodstock, where she died on 1 November 1883 (source). She is named on the family's stone with her husband and their daughter Jane (record), and as John Gerald's mother on his marriage registration and death certificate. Her grandson Jeffrey Robson Short, Cudge Ellingwood's partner, carried her surname.

Her parents, as the family accounts have them, were William Jeffrey, a blacksmith or stonemason of Foulden, and Mary Lyall, who came to Upper Canada about 1820 and settled at Cobourg and then near Keene, Peterborough County. Her brothers and sisters, as Find a Grave and Skinner's compilation give them: Andrew (1800-1863), "born at Foulden, Scotland" on his stone at Cobourg; Isabella (1801-1885), Mrs. George Gillespie of Otonabee; Jean (1803-1887), Mrs. Grigg; Catharine (1806-1882), Mrs. Adam Hall of Peterborough, on whose family monument Mary Lyall is commemorated (source); and, less certainly, William (1802-1879), of King Township. Andrew and the four sisters are John Graham's "five children, one boy and four girls" (source). The family's names point the same way: Mary's daughter Isabella named a son Thomas Lyall Hay (1879), and her son Joseph William named children Mary Jeffrey (1875) and William Hall (1877) (source).

Her children: Jane (1836-1909), Richard (1840/1-1904), Joseph William (1842-1924), Mary Blair (1844-1928), John Gerald (1845-1916) and Isabella (1848-1924, Mrs. James Hay); see John Short's page.

Research: Ruth Short's ancestry: the archive, the Ancestry tree, WikiTree and FamilySearch compared, Ellingwood line: the wives' families (Pattullo and Short, Adams and Deyoe, Rice and Sylvester).

Open questions

• Her baptism, January 1809, in the Foulden register (or another Berwickshire parish): her parents' names, which would prove the link to William Jeffrey and Mary Lyall.
• Her death date: 1 Nov 1883 (the gravestone) or 15 Nov (WikiTree). The Ontario death registration for Woodstock would settle it.