Early American Farm Life

By Nils D Olsson

My mother's family history extends back to the early sixteenth-century England. William Short was born on March 3, 1613 in Brewood, Staffordshire and was a lower-level member of the English establishment. He received a land grant from the Crown and joined a privately-funded expedition as a young man and voyaged west to the New World. He landed at the colony of Virginia, so named by Walter Raleigh for his reigning monarch then known as the Virgin Queen Elizabeth. Walter Raleigh, although never traveling to the Virginia Colony, popularized smoking tobacco in the Virgin Queen's court. William Short died as a young man on April 6, 1659. He was married to Elizabeth Symonds, and they had two children. His will is recorded in Surry County, Virginia, and is one of the oldest to exist in the Commonwealth of Virginia. After the Short family gained a foothold in the New World, we look forward across more than six generations to 1819 and the birth of Burwell B. Short in Pittsylvania County. Burwell married Francis Ann George on February 7, 1848. They had eleven children, including my grandfather, Samuel David Short, who was born November 7, 1864 at the tail end of the American Civil War. Samuel David married Ella Jackson Scruggs in 1894 and worked as a tobacco farmer on the family homestead in Pittsylvania County. They raised a family of nine children, including my mother Fannie Janet, who was born on February 11, 1911. My mother married and had two sons. My last trip to the farm came when I was sixteen. I graduated from high school and served a tour in the United States Air Force before graduating from college and marrying my wife who is the daughter of a NASA scientist. His specialty was space science and applications with emphasis on sounding rockets. He explains that his sounding rockets will leave the solar system long after his demise and slice across our galaxy. They will enter the universe beyond and continue on an endless voyage long after he has passed sway. NDO, 1.27.18

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1642987069
• ISBN13: 9781642987065
• Release Date: June 2018
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Length: 46 Pages
• Weight: 0.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"