This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: SHORT, FRANCIS, RAITT, FINNEY Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/XW.2ADI/720 Message Board Post: VISITORS FROM THE WEST -- Marshall Short, of Yreka, Cal. is here visiting his cousin, Dr. D.R. Francis, of West Fourth Street [Mansfield, Richland Co., Ohio]. Mr. Short is a native of Ohio and spent the earlier years of his life on a farm northwest of Ashland [Ashland County, Ohio]. During the gold fever in 1850 he went to California, going by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Mr. Short has seen a great deal of experience in the years since he went to California. He was a miner, drove pack trains and was engaged in various other lines of work on the Pacific Coast. He now has a fruit farm and is also engaged in stock raising. This is Mr. Short's first visit to Ohio since he left here 48 years ago. His grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. David Raitt, were pioneer residents of Richland County, having settled here in 1818. Mr. Short has just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. He is accompanied on his trip by the Rev. W.H. Finney, of Tarkio, Mo. formerly a resident of Richland Co! unty, who moved with his parents to Missouri in 1878. He is a son of the Rev. J.P. Finney, formerly of Mansfield, and a grandson of William Finney, who was murdered near this city in 1877 by the negro, Edward Webb. Mr. Finney is a graduate of Tarkio college, and is completing his theological course at the Xenia Seminary. He is revisiting the scenes of his early home here. Mr. Short is favorably impressed with the splendid growth and enterprise of Mansfield. The changes are manifold, not only here, but everywhere around, since he was in this part of the country nearly half a century ago. source: Semi-Weekly News (Mansfield, Richland Co., Ohio): 24 May 1898, Vol. 14, No. 44