The daughter of Martin
Short & Matilda (Norman), Eunice was born
in Shipman, Macoupin County, Illinois on the
15th of August and was their youngest
daughter. Her older sisters were: Mary Marie
born in 1849 and Elizabeth Jane who was born
in 1853. Her younger brother, George
McClellan, was born in 1862.
Her
father Martin Short enlisted in Co. K of the
9th Regiment of the Minnesota Volunteer
Infantry in 1862 at the age of forty-one. He
was captured only ten months later by the
rebels at Brice's Cross Road in Mississippi
and taken to the infamous Andersonville
Prison in Georgia where he died of scurvy.
Family
recollections say that after her father died,
Eunice was put into a convent school as they
were Catholic, and that her baby brother
George was sent to Montreal to live with
relatives.
Just
barely three months after her sixteenth
birthday, Eunice was out of the convent and
had married Albro Danforth on 21 November
1875 in Winona, Minnesota. They soon began a
family, their first child Clara Anora was
born in St. Charles in 1877. She and Albro
became the parents of nine more children:
Elizabeth, Lillian, George, Pearl, Ruby,
Harry, Everett, Robert, and Leonard Danforth.
Albro,
Eunice, and their five sons went to the area
of Taber, Alberta, Canada to buy land,
arriving there on April 8th 1907. Albro had
gone the previous fall and bought the land
where they built a house and barn. Sons
George and Harry also took up homesteads in
1907 and in 1911, sons Everett and Robert
took up homesteads near the Montana border.
After
Albro's death on the farm in 1917, Eunice
took her husband's place as head of the
family. She married Charlie Foote in 1933 in
Lethbridge and moved to Nemiskam, Alberta.
After his passing two years later, she
returned to Taber .
Active
in her own home, Eunice was still making
quilts well into her late eighties and it is
said she always welcomed her many visitors
with a hot cup of tea and light doughnuts or
cookies, and that she always had flowers in
her garden or blooming plants on her window
sills.
Considered
a courageous and pioneering woman, Eunice
remained involved in her community. Never
allowing crop failures, sickness, sorrow, or
difficulties to get her down, she was still
possessed of a sound mind, clear memory, and
a keen sense of humor at the age of
ninety-two.
At
the time of her passing, one year later in
1952, Eunice left as many as ninety-nine
descendants. She and Albro were both laid to
rest in the Taber Cemetery.
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