Rebecca Marie Duffy — known as Ruby — was named for her mother. She was born on November 16, 1882, probably in Coleville, Pennsylvania, although one record lists it as Coolville. She was the sixth child and third (and youngest) daughter of William George Duffy and Rebecca Smith Duffy. She was just over a year old when her mother died of typhoid fever, and about three when her father married Catherine Mahoney.
I haven’t yet been able to find Ruby in the 1900 census. She was 18 then, and perhaps living away from home.
On June 20, 1907, she married James Bovard McKain in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Washington County, Ohio. He was a widower who worked as an oil well fisherman. On their marriage license, her residence is listed as Marietta, Ohio, and his as Parkersburg, West Virginia.
By the 1910 federal census, they were living in the Walton District of Roane County, West Virginia. James continued to work in the oil fields as a tool fisherman.
It seems very likely that they are the McKains listed in the 1912 Parkersburg City Directory, although his wife’s name is shown as Catherine. He was married to Rebecca at that time; Catherine was his mother’s name. It is a little unclear, but Ruby — who was raised nearly all her life by a stepmother who was also named Catherine — may have taken this name for a time after her father’s death. They were living at 1306 Wells Circle in Parkersburg.
His 1918 draft card for World War I shows that same address. In the 1920 census, James worked as the manager of a tool company. In the 1921 city directory, he is listed as the president of his own company, JB McKain Fishing Tool Company.
In the Parkersburg city directory of 1926, he is a welder. It seems likely that this was the year they separated and perhaps divorced, because he is listed alone in the Roswell, New Mexico city directory. We know that James married his third wife — who was a West Virginia native, and returned there after his death — before 1930. His obituary said the couple moved to New Mexico in 1923, but this is possibly in error. James died there in 1947.
Ruby stayed in West Virginia. Family members have said that she was devastated by the divorce. She never remarried. With the possible exception of her stepmother (I have not be able to locate Catherine Mahoney Duffy in records after 1920), all of her Duffy relatives would have been elsewhere by 1926: Doll was in California, Elizabeth in Kansas, Wade in New Mexico, Jim in Oklahoma, and Jack in California. She and James McKain had no children together.
In the 1930 census, she was boarding with a couple in Parkersburg, and working as a secretary for the headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America. In the 1940 census, she answered that she was living in Butler County, Kansas in 1935. She may have moved in with or lived near her sister Elizabeth Duffy Moriarty for a time. In 1935, though, Elizabeth’s husband, Francis Moriarty, died, and a year later, the death of her daughter Gertrude’s husband, Herman Fischer, left Gertrude an impoverished widow with five young children. This worst time of the Depression may not have been one that allowed Elizabeth to also care for Ruby.
The 1940 census found Ruby living in the Jackson County Infirmary, where she is listed as institutionalized. I am still looking into the exact nature of her circumstances there. The Jackson County Infirmary was an almshouse, or poor house. In 1910, it housed about 21 individuals. It is sometimes referred to as the Jackson County Poor Farm. Poor farms often were farms worked by the inmates of the institution. At the time she was there, it seems to have been a place for the care of the infirm and elderly. She was 57 at the time of the census.
Ruby died on August 12, 1949 at the R. & R.H. Douglass Eastern Star Home in Millwood, West Virginia. A 2006 newspaper article on the Eastern Star Home in the Charleston Daily Mail mentions that “Sally D. Kneeream donated the property to Eastern Star in 1934 with the stipulation that the organization must use the land to house orphans and widows.” The Order of the Eastern Star is a Freemason organization. The home was a two-story house that sat on over 300 acres.
Her cause of death is listed as a coronary occlusion, and it is noted that she had severe arthritis. Some family members mentioned that they vaguely remembered hearing that Ruby suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. This was not listed anywhere on her death certificate, but again, this was completed (with several errors) by someone on the board of directors of the home, not a family member. She may have been nearly unknown to him.
Ruby is buried in Mt Olivet Cemetery in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
Patrick Duffy (b 1812) + Elizabeth Dillon (b 1818)
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William George Duffy (1846) + Rebecca Smith (1856)
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Rebecca Marie (Ruby) Duffy (1882)
Sources for this post include
Paupers in almhouses, 1910 — United States. Bureau of the Census, Joseph Adna Hill, Lewis Meriam, Emanuel Alexandrovich Goldenweiser; found on Google Books 11/9/2016
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Information presented here is based on my interpretation of the sources I’ve found. As new sources are found or inaccuracies discovered, the site will be updated.
Always happy to hear from cousins.
Duffy Family History 