John Gill Shorter, governor of Alabama, was born in Monticello, Ga., April 23, 1818; son of Dr. Reuben Clarke and Mary (Gill) Shorter. His grandfather was a native of Virginia. He was graduated at the University of Georgia, A.B., 1837, A.M., 1840; removed to Irwinton, Barbour county, Ala., with his parents, where he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1838. He settled in practice in Eufaula, Ala., and was appointed solicitor of the judicial circuit in 1842. He was married Jan. 4, 1843, to Mary J., daughter of Dr. Cullen and Jane (Lamon) Battle of Eufaula; was a state senator, 1845–47; a state representative from Barbour county in the Alabama legislature in 1851, and was appointed judge of the circuit court of the state by Governor Collier in 1851, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Judge Goldthwaite. He was elected for a term of six years in 1852, and re-elected in 1858, serving until 1861, when he was sent as commissioner front Alabama to Georgia to urge the legislature of that state to co-operate in the movement for secession; was a delegate from Alabama in the provisional congress of the Confederate States at Montgomery, 1861, and was elected governor of Alabama in the same year, defeating T. H. Watts of Montgomery. He served as governor until the close of his official term, January, 1864, when he resumed his law practice. He died in Eufaula, Ala., May 29, 1872.

The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans 1904

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