Jack Russell Terriers were created by Jack Russell — a Victorian parson who bought a dog named “Trump” from a milkman in Oxford. Every Jack Russell Terrier is descended from that dog.
Fox Terrier was a term used for any terrier which was used to bolt foxes out of their burrows.
It is a strange fact that the population of dogs and dog breeds that we enjoy today largely emerged as a hobby for bored English Victorian aristocrats in a tiny sliver of English history — during a period in which classification, measurement, and standardization became a national obsession.
The small white fox-working terriers were first bred by the Reverend John “Jack” Russell, a parson and hunting enthusiast born in 1795, and they can trace their origin to the now extinct English white terrier. Difficulty in differentiating the dog from the creature it was pursuing brought about the need for a mostly white dog, and so in 1819 during his last year of university at Exeter College, Oxford, he purchased a small white and tan terrier female named Trump from a local milkman in the nearby small hamlet of Elsfield or Marston. Trump epitomised his ideal Fox Terrier, which, at the time, was a term used for any terrier which was used to bolt foxes out of their burrows. Her colouring was described as “…white, with just a patch of dark tan over each eye and ear; whilst a similar dot, not larger than a penny piece, marks the root of the tail.” Davies, a friend of Russell’s, wrote: “Trump was such an animal as Russell had only seen in his dreams”. She was the basis for a breeding program to develop a terrier with high stamina for the hunt as well as the courage and formation to chase out foxes that had gone to ground. By the 1850s, these dogs were recognised as a distinct breed.
