Jack Russell
The Reverend Mr John Russell [1] {Jack Russell, Parson Russell) 1795-1883, was an English clergyman well known as a sportsman, hunting enthusiast and bon vivant. Russell was active in the formation of the Fox Terrier Club and in the development of and codifying of the standards for the Fox Terrier, although he did not show his own dogs, likening the difference between show dogs and hunting dogs to that between cultivated and wild flowers. [2]
Russell was ordained in 1819 and appears to have been a reasonably good clergyman. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford (where his teachers noted his preference for hunting over academics) and secured a comfortable country living for his family at Swymbridge. Despite training and ability, he was never a high-ranking clergyman, and it has been suggested that his love of sport exceeded his professional ambition. He became particularly known in hunting and agricultural circles as a houndsman, but certainly kept hunt terriers as well.
The origins of the Jack Russell Terrier: The immortal Trump
The actual lineage of John Russell’s terriers is a mystery, but it is generally accepted that Russell stated that while a student at Oxford University, he spied a little terrier bitch on a milkman’s wagon and bought her on the spot. The bitch was named “Trump”, and she is credited as being his main brood bitch. Unfortunately, the only surviving pictures of Trump were painted after her death; one of these is in the Harness Room at Sandringham Castle, having been commissioned by the Prince of Wales. Fuzzy reproductions show a not particularly attractive little dog, and it is not clear what qualities Trump exhibited which made Russell buy her outright, without having seen her in action.
There was a scramble for Russell’s dogs after his death, and it is less than certain who ended up with “Jack Russell’s terriers”; the sister of his studmaster appears to have acquired a few. Certainly, the chances that any of the bloodlines of the dogs presented today as Jack Russell Terriers or Parson Russell Terriers or any of the variants thereof are direct descendants of Trumps or any of the parson’s dogs, are slim.