John Short

Father of John Gerald Short and great-grandfather of Dick Ellingwood. Born at Rugley, a hamlet near Alnwick in Northumberland, England, on 6 August 1808, as his gravestone has it (record). He married Mary Jeffrey, of a Berwickshire family settled at Cobourg, in January 1836, and their first child, Jane, was born at Cobourg that November. He was the first postmaster of Newcastle, in Clarke Township, Durham County, from 1845; the 1851 directory has “Short, John, postmaster Newcastle,” a few lines from his brother-in-law “Jeffrey, A., merchant, (hardware) Cobourg,” Andrew Jeffrey (record). His children, as WikiTree gives them from Ward Skinner’s Descendants of William Jeffrey and Find a Grave links them (source):

• Jane (23 Nov 1836, Cobourg - 6 Aug 1909, Woodstock), on the family stone;
• Richard (1840 or 1841-1904), very probably the “Richard J. Short” whose funeral was held near South Haven, Michigan, in September 1904: “a native of Canada,” he had lived some years in Chicago, like his brother John Gerald, and left a widow and an adopted daughter (source);
• Joseph William (May 1842, Newcastle - 8 Jan 1924, High River, Alberta): a dry-goods man in Brooklyn, then in the hardware business at Woodstock from 1870, and from 1883 one of the first settlers of High River (source);
• Mary Blair (1844-1928), of Woodstock;
• John Gerald (1845-1916), father of Ruth (Short) Ellingwood;
• Isabella (1 Aug 1848, Newcastle - 12 Jan 1924, Woodstock), Mrs. James Hay, whose gravestone calls her “daughter of John and Mary Short” (record).

He died at Orono on 4 October 1858, aged 50, and is buried there in Lawrence Cemetery, under a small marble stone, now broken (record). His widow moved to Cobourg and then to Woodstock, where the family lived on Graham Street. The tall stone at the Woodstock Presbyterian Cemetery that names him, with Mary and their daughter Jane, was put up after Jane’s death in 1909: for him, a cenotaph.

Research: research/ellingwood/Short_Pattullo_Comparison.md, research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Wives_Families.md.

Open questions

• His parents, and when he came to Upper Canada. The FamilySearch tree gives him a father “John Short, 1785” (GYWT-69S), with no wife or source shown. The Rugley birthplace points to the registers of Alnwick parish (or Shilbottle or Edlingham), Northumberland, for his baptism in 1808.
• What the side face of the Woodstock family stone says.