Jack Russell

The Reverend Mr John Russell {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 Kennel Club, 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.

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.

Today, Jack Russell is best remembered for the Jack Russell Terrier, a small terrier breed that bears his name, even in his own day, such dogs would simply have been called "Fox Terriers". One can imagine people saying such things as, "Whose dogs are those?" "Jack Russell's". Or, "your dogs remind me of Jack Russell's". Or, "That's a Jack Russell type of dog."

However it happened, small white fox-hunting terriers became known as Jack Russell Terriers.

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.