Chapter 1: Family Ancestry

Arthur Francis Duffey was born in South Boston, Massachusetts in 1879.  His father, also named Arthur, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in about 1841.  His mother, Catherine Ann Kelley (sometimes spelled Katherine), was born in 1851 on Prince Edward Island, Canada.  They would make their way to Boston separately. 

Going back another generation, Arthur’s grandparents, Cornelius and Catherine Duffy, were the first of our Duffey family to arrive in the New World. (Initially the name was spelled Duffy; later, Duffey.) We believe they originated from County Cork, Ireland.  The young couple sailed to Halifax years before the Irish potato famine forced others to emigrate.  Because Nova Scotia did not keep immigration records until 1881, no record exists of their arrival.  What Cornelius did for a living remains a mystery, but we know that he had a least one son, Arthur, who was born in Halifax.

The early years of Cornelius’ son are blanks too.  But he must have been restless and open to adventure, because, following the US Civil War in 1865, Arthur immigrated alone to the Boston area, where jobs were plentiful.  Many Irish youths from Nova Scotia did the same, and like most of them, Arthur arrived as an unskilled worker.

New England Glass Co.

Boston was a leading fine-cut glass production center at that time.  So the young man decided to try his luck in the glass business.  Based on where he met his future wife, we surmise that he found his way to East Cambridge and Somerville, prominent Boston neighborhoods in glass manufacturing and where Irish immigrants made up more than half of the population.  Here he would become an apprentice glassblower at the New England Glass Company of East Cambridge.  We checked to see if he might have learned the trade from his father in Halifax, but the glassblowing industry did not exist there until after 1880.

The following excerpts describe the company:

New England Glass Co. Glassblowing Department, ca. 1855

The largest company of its type in the world, the New England Glass Company (1818-1878) of Cambridge, Massachusetts produced both blown and pressed glass objects in a variety of colors, which had engraved, cut, etched, and gilded decorations.  The firm was one of the first glass companies to use a steam engine to operate its cutting machines, and it built the only oven in the country that could manufacture red lead, a key ingredient in the making of flint glass, a type of glass used in the manufacture of spectacles, telescopes, rhinestones, and fancy lead crystal dishware.

The number of employees reached the highest point by 1865, when about 500 men and boys were employed.  The brick-floored blowing room housed furnaces, annealing ovens, and kilns.  Here, beneath a sky-lighted roof supported by iron columns, the gaffers and their various assistants, many of them boys, translated molten metal into formed glass.

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Harvard Square, ca. 1858

Years earlier, a young Catherine Kelley and her mother, Ann, had emigrated from their home on Prince Edward Island, Canada to Cambridge near Harvard College.  Their 1858 voyage followed the 1854 death of Ann’s husband, Franklin Evans.  In Cambridge, Ann soon met and married James Martin, a local cobbler.  Neither Franklin nor James adopted Catherine, so she retained her mother’s maiden name.

The family would move several times but remained near Harvard and the Charles River in Cambridge.  Catherine attended elementary school and then went on to high school.  Like most young ladies at the time, Catherine continued to live at home after graduation.

Cambridge Horse Railroad, 1870

Public transportation was well established in the area with the Cambridge Horse Railroad, so she could have commuted to several Boston-area neighborhoods for work.

Eventually Catherine would meet Arthur, the aspiring glass blower, who was living in East Cambridge or nearby Somerville.  Young adults could meet in churches and halls rented for dances and other social events throughout the year.  Arthur and Catherine may have met at such a place.  They married and had their first child, Catharine, in August of 1870.  They probably lived near the factory, because glassblowers started work very early.

Suffolk Glass Works

A year or so later, Arthur heard about a job opportunity about five miles away in South Boston.  After a massive fire at Suffolk Glass Works on 24 March 1871, the owner immediately set to rebuilding the factory and resume operations.  In early 1872, the young family moved to South Boston’s Bowen Street, close to the newly rebuilt structure.  Arthur would have been among the 60-70 workers employed.

Later that year, they moved just a few steps away from the factory to a tenement on Newman Street, where Catherine gave birth to their second child, Mary, in December of 1872.  Most of the firm’s employees lived in the immediate neighborhood, where company criers served as alarm clocks to wake the workers before the predawn shift.  At Suffolk, workers would fire up glass kilns just after midnight to ensure the glass would be in a liquid molten state by 5:00 a.m.

Glassblower and crew, 1908 (click to enlarge)

If working steadily, Arthur could look forward to spending about 10 hours a day at the factory Monday through Friday and a half-day on Saturday in hot, dirty and potentially dangerous conditions.  He would have to keep in the good graces of the gaffer, the supervisor who ran the glassblowing operation and could hire and fire his crew as he saw fit.  Fortunately, when he finally reached the level of glassblower, Arthur would become a gaffer.

But all was not well in Boston.  The Great Boston Fire of 1872 and a world depression of 1873-79 created a shortage of buyers for the specialized items that Suffolk Glass Works and other Boston area manufacturers produced.  Instead of lead glass “novelties” such as crystal stemware, customers sought tableware made of inexpensive soda-lime glass from companies in the Midwest and Canada.  In Boston, this resulted in work stoppages, layoffs, and too many skilled workers competing for the same position.

Tenement interior/exterior

This was not welcome news to Arthur and his family, who were already dealing with hardship.  About six months after the birth of Mary, little Catharine died tragically from meningitis at the age of 2 years and 11 months on July 15, 1873.  The following year, mother Catherine gave birth to their third child, Julia Agatha, with the help of a midwife, who lived next door.

On Newman Street, the family shared a single dwelling with multiple residents.  Tenement housing was typically cramped, loud, badly lit, without indoor plumbing and with little or no ventilation.  Heading outside would not necessarily bring relief either.  Competing odors included stables, refuse, railway pollution, exhaust from nearby glass and iron factories, and the stench associated with poor drainage.

Hope for a better life came by word of mouth from fellow glass workers, who had recently transferred to the Burlington Glass Company of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  The flint glass manufacturer had just reopened in 1877 and was hiring.  Arthur and his family moved to 169 McNab Street, a short walk from the factory.

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

The city of Hamilton is located at the westernmost end of Lake Ontario about 45 miles west of Niagara Falls.  Using today’s cars and freeways, it takes eight hours to drive there from South Boston.  Hamilton attracted many industries with its easy transportation access via rail and water.  Despite the economic downturn of the 1870s, by 1877 its population had grown to 32,641 as workers flocked to manufacture products such as iron goods, wire, sewing machines, fireworks, and, most important to our story, glass.

During their time in Hamilton, Catherine and Arthur welcomed their fourth daughter, Catherine Cecilia.  It was common for parents to use the same name of a child they had lost.  The Canadian experience was neither successful nor long lived because the family returned to their same South Boston neighborhood in 1878.  They had lived at 15 Newman Street prior to the move but returned to 18 Newman Street.

St. Augustine's Church
225 Dorchester St., South Boston

Arthur Francis Duffey, the principal subject of this narrative and first boy in the family, was born the following year on June 14, 1879.  His baptism would have taken place nearby at St. Augustine's Church, where most of the inhabitants of the area worshiped.  Construction of the church began in 1874 when the emerging Irish Catholic population outgrew the small chapel down the street.  The addition of a 224-foot spire in 1880 marked the building's completion, but pastors held mass throughout the years of construction.

Example of a tenement with rear house

The baby's arrival on the scene came at a rather inopportune time and place.  Shortly after Arthur's birth, declining finances removed the family to a rear house on nearby Vinton Street.  Residents, who could not afford to rent the more expensive front-house tenements, lived in the cheaper rear-house firetraps, where rooms were smaller and ventilation and sanitation worse.  These shacks, typically built without permanent foundations of brick or stone, housed multiple families in four to six rooms and were located next to the privies used by both front and rear tenement dwellers.

At least they still lived in the same neighborhood.  Only a few streets away, the family retained their same friends, which certainly helped matters.

When Arthur returned from Canada to Suffolk Glass Works, his job title changed from glassblower to glass cutter.  Either there were no open glassblower positions or he was no longer physically fit to perform the more vigorous glassblowing tasks. 

Working conditions in the early glass foundries produced several health problems:  severe burns from a 2150ºF furnace, heat exhaustion, eye tissue damage associated with intense ultraviolet and infrared radiation, and respiratory illnesses.  Sustained breathing of the toxic fumes of free-borne silica weakens the lungs and can lead to many serious conditions, like pneumonia.

Arthur came down with a cold two weeks before Christmas of 1883.  It rapidly developed into pneumonia, which he sustained for seven days.  On December 20, Arthur passed away at the age of 42.  One suspects that he may have not enjoyed good health for some time.

His passing made a tremendous and immediate impact.  Catherine’s responsibilities magnified overnight: the rearing four young children between 4-11 years.  The family had no income, no company retirement, no inheritance, no Social Security, and no insurance; and there were bills to be paid.  One wonders how Catherine kept the family afloat.

Rainy Day, Boston, by Childe Hassam, 1885

Sometime between 1886 and 1890, the family moved to Bower Street, about a 50-minute walk westward in the nearby neighborhood of Roxbury.  Unfortunately, specific family details up to 1900 are meager because most of the Boston 1880 census was lost and all the Boston 1890 census records were destroyed in a 1921 fire.

However, the 1890 Boston City Directory indicates that Catherine was still a widow.  She would never remarry, but we have recently come to know that Catherine had a daughter, Elise Gertrude, (b. August 1890), seven years after Arthur’s death.  No information of Elise's birth has been discovered. But from Ancestry.com DNA testing I have learned (Jun2018) that I have a 3rd-4th cousin with Elise as an ancester! (My 'new' cousin would have been a 2nd cousin if there was more Duffey DNA, but that was bot possible) To avoid embarrassment Catherine gave Elise the Duffey surname. No mention was ever made of the matter within our family. 

Boston housing in 1875 and 1891

The following year, 1891, they moved one street north to Ottawa Street.  By this time, the older girls, who still lived at home, would have jobs and could help out with family finances.  The family never again lived in a rear house.  However, one might infer from real estate records that a few of the Roxbury houses where the family resided may have been in extremely poor condition.  New houses, some of which still exist today, were built within only a few years of the family’s departure. South Boston 1875 housing records indicated that each home had about nine family members. The occupancy rate further increased by 1891.

Not too surprising, young Arthur was the only family member to achieve an education beyond high school.  Catherine made the decisions for the family now.  Arthur’s later scholastic and athletic successes would dictate the path he would follow, with his mother at his side at each step.

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To better illustrate the path the family took as they moved around the Boston area, this current-day map traces their residences sequentially.  Please note the body of water, South Bay, extending into the city.  This shallow bay would disappear before the turn of the century and be replaced with the vast rail yards of Boston’s South Station, supporting routes to southern New England, New York, and points south. The growing family 's timeline is outlined too.