Grundy County IL Archives Biographies.....Short, Lemuel 
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Author: Bio/Gen Record LaSalle/Grundy 1900

LEMUEL SHORT.

It is probable that there never lived in Grundy county a better example of the 
self-made man than the late Lemuel Short, of Goose Lake township, some account 
of whose useful and busy career it will be attempted to give in the following 
paragraphs. The life of such a man affords a useful lesson to young men of the 
rising generation and should form a part of such a work as this, which is 
devoted to the lives and achievements of the men who have redeemed Illinois 
from a wilderness state and promoted its important interests and developed its 
natural resources until they have made it in many respects the leading state 
of the Union.

Lemuel Short was born in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, August 15, 1819, a 
son of James and Ellen (McFarland) Short, natives of the Keystone state. In 
1824, when he was about five years old, the family removed to a point within 
the present limits of Ashland county, Ohio, where his parents both died, his 
father in 1863. The summer of 1836 was spent by young Short, then seventeen 
years old, in Michigan. He returned to Ohio and remained there until 1838, 
when he emigrated to Illinois and located in Lake county, where he soon 
purchased a farm and busied himself with its improvement and in hunting and 
trapping. He managed his affairs with so much care and thrift that he soon 
paid for his land.

In 1856 Mr. Short came to Grundy county and bought the property in Felix (now 
Goose Lake) townshijp, where his widow now lives. He was industrious and 
enterprising, and possessed good judgment and business ability of a high 
order, and he accumulated property rapidly, and at the time of his death, 
which occurred at his home in Goose Lake township, January 13, 1895, he owned 
more than twenty-five hundred acres of farm land in Goose Lake township and a 
farm of three hundred and seventy-three acres in Lake county, and was one of 
the leading stock-raisers of the county. This property he gained by the most 
commendable methods. He gave strict attention to every detail of his business 
and accorded to every man with whom he dealt the fullest rights and advantages 
in every transaction consistent with equity and good business practice. His 
success was won openly and in a fair fight with the world, arid every one who 
knew him rejoiced with him in it, for all knew that it was richly deserved. 
Dying, he left not only wealth but the better heritage of a good name.

December 31, 1845, when he was in his twenty-seventh year, Mr. Short married 
Sarah Burr, daughter of Warham and Nancy (Cummins) Burr, who was born in 
Shelby county, Indiana, February 10, 1826, and was then nineteen years old. 
Her father was born in the state of New York and died in Will county, 
Illinois, September 6, 1861. Her mother was a native of Ohio and died in Will 
county, Illinois, March 31, 1862. Mr. and Mrs. Burr came to Illinois in 1833 
from Shelby county, Indiana, and brought their daughter with them. Mrs. Short 
was then seven years old.

Lemuel and Sarah (Burr) Short had children named as follows, in the sequence 
of their nativity: James was born in Will county, Illinois, November 14, 1847. 
He married Frances M. Lattimer, June 11, 1874, and one child was born to them, 
July 1, 1876, a daughter, who was named Frances M. in honor of her mother. 
Mrs. Short died on the day of her daughter's birth. Frances M. Short married 
Charles S. Dudgeon, a prosperous farmer of Goose Lake township, and they have 
one child, Mildred V., born June 22, 1895. August 3, 1881, James Short, after 
having been a widower for more than five years, married Mrs. Caroline Clark, a 
daughter of William Moore, who settled in Grundy county among the pioneers. 
His second wife died at Denver, Colorado, August 8, 1899. He is now living in 
Kansas, where he is prospering as a farmer and wields much influence as a 
citizen. Warham B. Short, second child of Lemuel and Sarah (Burr) Short, was 
born in Will county, Illinois, August 9, 1849, and married Mary Heydecker, 
January 1, 1878, and they have one child, Mary Sarah, born August 18, 1887. 
Charles F. and Mary Heydecker, parents of Mrs. Warham B. Short, were married 
May 11, 1845. Her father, a native of Germany, came to this country in 1844 
and located in Lake county, Illinois, where he died April 14, 1896, leaving an 
excellent record as a farmer and citizen. Her mother, a native of New York, 
died at the old family home in Lake county, Illinois, January 24, 1884. They 
had seven children, all of whom are living. Christian T. Heydecker was born in 
Lake county, Illinois, September 4, 1846, and became prominent as a lawyer and 
is now state's attorney of Lake county. He married Louisa Townsend, who died 
without issue, November 14, 1873. April 14, 1875, he married Carrie Gousley, 
of Springfield, Illinois, and they have three children,—Coral, Bessie and 
Alice. Charles W. Heydecker was born December 22, 1847, in Lake county, 
Illinois, and married Eliza Crawford, of Lake county, May 22, 1872. They have 
three children: Roy, who married Cora Pelliphant, of Lake county, Illinois, 
and has a daughter named Ruth; William and Mabel. Mary Heydecker is Mrs. 
Warham B. Short, as has been stated. Edwin J. Heydecker was born in Lake 
county, Illinois, and is a leading lawyer of that county, where he married 
Sarah Crittenden. Clara P. Heydecker, born March 20, 1857, married Lemuel 
Short, Jr. Emma Heydeckerr born in Lake county, Illinois, March 12, 1859, is 
still living there, unmarried. Adolph Heydecker, born February 22, 1861, is a 
well-to-do farmer of Lake county.

Alvina, third child of Lemuel and Sarah (Burr) Short, was born in Lake county, 
Illinois, May 25, 1852, and was married July 4, 1871, to Mathew Gaffney, a 
farmer and stock-raiser of Hamilton, Kansas, and they have had twelve 
children, eleven of whom are living. Of these John married Ann Adams, of 
Hamilton, Kansas, and had three children: Ellen, who is now Mrs. Honeycup, of 
Hamilton, Kansas, and has a son named Vivian; Lucy and Mary live at Hamilton, 
Kansas; Alvina died in Will county, Illinois; and others are named James, 
Edward, Rowley, Sarah, Lillie, George and Hubert. Lemuel, Jr., the fourth 
child of Lemuel and Sarah (Burr) Short, was born in Lake county, Illinois, 
January 24, 1855, and, as has been stated, married Clara P. Heydecker, a 
sister of the wife of his brother, Warham B. They live at Hamilton, Kansas, 
where Mr. Short is a successful farmer, and have eleven children, as follows: 
Lida, Clara E., Orrin, Lottie, Elmer, Pearl, Emma, Lemuel, Cora, Valentine and 
an infant. William, the fifth child of Lemuel and Sarah (Burr) Short, was born 
in Lake county, Illinois, July 17, 1856, and died there on February 1, 1859. 
Mrs. Lemuel Short, in her widowhood, lives on the family homestead in Goose 
Lake township, with her son, Warham B. Short, who has succeeded to the 
management of the farm and is one of the most prominent of the young men of 
the township.

Additional Comments:
Source:  Biographical and Genealogical Record of La Salle and Grundy County, 
Illinois, Volume 11, Chicago, 1900, p762-764

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