Henry Short (1580-1672) is my ancestor and one of the original settlers of Newbury, Essex County, Massachusetts. I spotted his name while I was researching a fellow founder of Newbury, my 10th-great-grandfather John Emery (1599-1683).
Interested in seeing what else I could learn about Henry, I decided to search for his name in GenealogyBank’s Massachusetts records with the keyword “Newbury.”
This search led me to the obituary of Henry’s 3rd-great-granddaughter Abigail Short (1830-1903).
Curiously, this obituary reports that Abby died in Newburyport, but her FamilySearch records say that she died in Newbury. Are these two separate places?
From an Internet search, I discovered that Newburyport and Newbury were divided into two cities in 1764, about 30 years after Newbury was settled. Henry Short was an original settler of the town before it was divided.
According to Wikipedia:
“Newburyport was settled in 1635 as part of Newberry Plantation, now Newbury. On January 28, 1764, the General Court of Massachusetts passed ‘An act for erecting part of the town of Newbury into a new town by the name of Newburyport.”
My GenealogyBank search for Henry’s name also produced the obituary of another Short cousin who “was a direct descendant from Henry Short, who with Richard Dummer, held the original grant of the entire town of Newbury.”
A detailed obituary, it mentions his three sisters – including their married surnames; that his father was a “tinman”; and that he was the current holder of “many valuable documents and papers… among them all the grants and deeds of land to his ancestors and an entire collection of almanacs from 1726.”
It would be terrific to know if these papers were passed down and preserved in the family.
Genealogy Tip: The obituaries of your relatives can give you additional details about the family. Find your family stories at GenealogyBank.com.