Pattullo and Short

1765–1974

The line in brief

The ancestry of Ruth Ethelwyn (Short) Ellingwood (1893-1974), mother of Dick Ellingwood: four emigrant families who settled Upper Canada in the 1820s and 1830s. Alexander Pattullo, a native of Dundee, married Jean Watson at Inveresk in 1806 and in 1820 went out to a farm at Caledon, Peel County, where his wife and children followed him in 1823; he was killed there by a falling tree in 1828. His son Halkett married Jane Robson, of a Roxburghshire family, at Caledon in 1833, and in 1855 moved to Blenheim Township, Oxford County, where he died that June. Their son George was the father of Duff Pattullo, Premier of British Columbia; their youngest, Mary, married John Gerald Short at Woodstock in 1879.

John G. was the son of John Short of Rugley, Northumberland, first postmaster of Newcastle, Canada West, and of Mary Jeffrey, whose father William came from Foulden, Berwickshire, to Cobourg about 1820 and whose brother Andrew was mayor of Cobourg. A hardware merchant and then an organ manufacturer at Woodstock, John G. took the family to Chicago in 1896-97 and from there to Spokane, where Ruth married Cudge Ellingwood in 1921.

Where it went

  1. c. 1774Dundee, ScotlandAlexander Pattullo
  2. 1806Inveresk, MidlothianAlexander Pattullo
  3. Across the Atlantic1808Rugley, NorthumberlandJohn Short
  4. 1820Caledon, Upper CanadaAlexander Pattullo
  5. 1836Cobourg, Upper CanadaJohn Short
  6. 1845Newcastle, Canada WestJohn Short
  7. 1879Woodstock, OntarioJohn Gerald Short
  8. 1897ChicagoJohn Gerald Short
  9. by 1910SpokaneJohn Gerald Short

Four generations

The Pattullo name, four generations

  1. 3Alexander Pattullo c. 1774–1828A native of Dundee who married Jean Watson at Inveresk, near Edinburgh, in 1806 and in 1820 went out to Upper Canada, settling on a farm at Caledon, Peel County, where his wife and children joined him in 1823.
  2. 2Halkett Pattullo 1809–1855Born at Inveresk, near Edinburgh, in 1809, he came to Upper Canada as a boy to his father's farm at Caledon, Peel County.
  3. 1Mary Pattullo 1852–1932Mother of Ruth Ethelwyn (Short) Ellingwood and wife of John Gerald Short, whom she married at Woodstock, Ontario, in 1879.
  4. 0Ruth Ethelwyn Short 1893–1974Born at Woodstock, Ontario, in 1893, the youngest child of John G. Short and Mary Pattullo, she came with her family to Chicago in 1897 and later to Spokane, where she was a stenographer and a Christian Scientist.

The line down the left is drawn as the tree draws it: solid where a record shows the link to the parent above, dashed where it rests on compiled accounts, dotted where it is reasoned from the evidence, grey where it is only possible. A bar fades where a birth or death year isn't known.

Everyone in the line, 13 people

Still being worked on

Research threads

Open questions

  • John Short’s parents, in Northumberland; his baptism, August 1808, in Alnwick parish.
  • Alexander Pattullo’s parents, in Dundee, and the origin of Halkett’s name.
  • Jean Watson’s parents and birth year (1768-69 or 1771).
  • William Jeffrey’s and Mary Lyall’s parents in Berwickshire.
  • John G. Short’s birth year, 1845 or 1847, and when the family left Chicago for Spokane.
For the record: the line at a glance and how sure it is

The line at a glance

Alexander Pattullo (c. 1774-1828), of Dundee and Caledon = Jean Watson > Halkett Pattullo (1809-1855) = Jane Robson (1809-1879), daughter of Thomas Robson and Jean Clark > Mary Pattullo (1852-1932) = John Gerald Short (1845-1916), son of John Short (1808-1858) and Mary Jeffrey (1809-1883), daughter of William Jeffrey and Mary Lyall > Ruth Ethelwyn Short (1893-1974) = Richard Everett “Cudge” Ellingwood Sr. > Richard Everett “Dick” Ellingwood Jr. (1929-2019).

The scope walks every ancestor of Ruth Short. Her husband’s side is the Ellingwood line, which stops at her.

How sure it is

Ruth’s birth registration (Woodstock, 1893) and her parents’ marriage registration (Woodstock, 1879), with her father’s death certificate (Spokane, 1916), prove the steps from Ruth to her four grandparents. Above them the links are probable: Halkett to Alexander Pattullo and Jean Watson by his indexed baptism, the stone he put up at Caledon and his brother James’s marriage; Mary Jeffrey to William Jeffrey and Mary Lyall by Ward Skinner’s compiled Descendants of William Jeffrey and Mary Lyall’s monument at Peterborough; Jane Robson to Thomas Robson and Jean Clark by their stone in her own township and two trees that give her as their daughter. The research is followed in the thread on Ruth Short’s ancestry (threads/short-pattullo-ancestry.md).

Their families and the files

+ 36 husbands, wives and children

Research filesresearch/ellingwood/Short_Pattullo_Comparison.mdresearch/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Wives_Families.mdresearch/ellingwood/Ruth_Short_Descendants.md

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