1894 by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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wife, the former Margaret Egan (c.1838-1883). According to Hugh himself, he was born in Cranston, Rhode Island. But most everything published during his lifetime put his birthplace as nearby River Point, one of the Pawtuxet Valley mill villages that now make up the town of West Warwick. Whichever the case, many years later one inquisitive journalist wrote; “At the church rectory of St. Anne’s Church, Cranston, we uncovered the official fact that Hugh Duffy, son of Michael and Margaret, was baptized on November 28, 1866.”

A recent Duffy biographer portrays the family as close, affectionate, and religiously devout, but small sized for an Irish Catholic clan of the times. National and Rhode Island censuses place younger daughters (Anna, born 1870, and Catherine, born 1874) in the household, and mention of nieces and nephews in Hugh’s last will and testament suggests that at least one of them may have survived childhood, their non-appearance in subsequent census listings for the Duffy family notwithstanding. Little else is known about his siblings. During Hugh’s formative years, the family resided in River Point where Hugh was schooled locally. To census takers in 1940, Duffy maintained that he had gotten through the second year of high school. But contemporaneous records place him in the work force by the time he had reached his early teens. Indeed, he may have

1894