The final member of the William George Duffy family is a bit of a mystery. We do not yet know exactly who his mother was, or exactly how he came into the family. He was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania on January 12, 1892.
This is after the death of W.G. Duffy’s first wife, Rebecca Smith (d 1883), so he cannot be her child. W.G. Duffy remarried in 1885, but Catherine Mahoney, W.G. Duffy’s second wife, always said on census records that she had not given birth to any children. W.G. Duffy did always list him as his son. In census records, he listed his mother’s birth state as New York.
W.G. Duffy is listed as Jack’s father on Jack’s death certificate. But his mother is not named on that document.
Death certificates are notorious for having misinformation and missing information on them — after all, the individual they are about can’t correct them. It is easy to begin speculating, but impossible to really know without documentation that I’ve yet to find —and which may not exist.
He was clearly a member of the family, though, however he came into it. Jack was ten years younger than his next oldest sibling, Ruby, and was seventeen when his father died in 1909. In 1910, he was in the household that included W.G. Duffy’s widow Catherine; Jack’s oldest half-brother, W.G. Duffy Jr and his wife Ella; and Jack’s half-sister Doll and her three children. He was working as a laborer at odd-jobs.
By 1917, when he registered for the draft, he was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was working as a machinist, employed by Tim Cushing. This was probably oil-related: the 1920 Tulsa Directory lists Tim Cushing as the vice president of the Oil City Tool Company. Jack was described on the draft card as being single, and of medium height and build, with black hair and blue eyes.
On July 20, 1919, he married Stella Jones in Tulsa. Stella was born in West Virginia on October 5, 1897, the daughter of Charles H Jones and Maesdoria (also listed as Masodonia, Massalona, or Dora in various records) Knotts Jones. Not long after Stella’s birth, her family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where her father worked as a miller. In 1910, they were in Wichita, where he worked as an engineer at a packing company. It is unclear exactly how or when Stella came to Oklahoma, but in the 1920 census, Jack’s Tulsa household includes not only his new wife but also her divorced sister, Fay Jones North.
It seems likely that they were in Tulsa during the Tulsa race massacre, although I do not know if any were active participants. The only doubt raised about their presence n the city then has to do their son’s birth record.
Their son John Robert Duffy was born on August 20, 1923. Although the 1930 census lists his birthplace as West Virginia, all other records indicate Tulsa, Oklahoma.
By the 1930 census, Jack was working as a gas tester in the oil industry. They owned the home they lived in, and in addition to their young son, the household now included both Fay and Jack’s widowed mother-in-law. Stella was working as a PBX operator in the petroleum industry.
In about 1935, the couple divorced. Stella moved to Houston, Texas with their son. In 1940, Stella and John Robert were living with Fay and her new husband, JJ “Red” Delahide. She continued to work as a PBX operator. She lived in Missouri City, Texas, but died in Houston on November 6, 1978 at the age of 81. She was then in the Golden Age Manor, and died of cardiac arrest, with additional conditions of a fractured pelvis and organic brain disease. She is buried in Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery.
Jack remarried at some point between 1935 and 1939. His second wife, Cora Wassom, was born in Wagoner, Oklahoma on March 31, 1903. She was the daughter of Allen Wassom and Georgia Smith. She had been married twice previously, to Ira Bolch, whom she divorced sometime before 1929, and then William F Campbell in 1931. By 1935, she was divorced from William and working in a restaurant in Tulsa.
Jack and Cora were living in Bakersfield, California by some point in the late 1930s. In the 1940 census, he worked as a laborer for the water company; this work may have also been in connection with the U.S. Air Corp field in Taft. Cora’s daughter from her first marriage, Margie Bolch, lived with them. Jack listed his residence in 1935 as Breckenridge, Michigan. It is not clear what he may have been doing there, but given that this was during the Great Depression, he may have gone wherever he could find work.
By 1942, the couple lived in Taft, California. Jack’s draft registration card of that year lists them as living in a housing project; he was working for the Water Department for the U.S. Air Corp, Gardener Field, Taft, California.
Two ads in the Bakersfield Californian reveal that by the 1950s, Jack was the owner and operator of Duffy’s Driving School.
Jack died on February 12, 1962, in Bakersfield, at the age of seventy. He is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery there.
Cora remarried at some point after 1970 — by 1978 she was married to Levi Machamer, a widower in his seventies who was living in Bakersfield.
I suspect the marriage did not last; she died in Baxter Springs, Kansas in 1980. She was a member of a church there at the time of her death. Her siblings lived in the area, and it seems likely that she came to the area for that reason. Levi is not mentioned in the obituary, although he survived her.
Patrick Duffy (b 1812) + Elizabeth Dillon (b 1818)
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William George Duffy (1846) + unknown mother [perhaps adopted?]
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John “Jack” Daniel Duffy (1892)
Sources for this post include:
“More Entries for Fair Parade,” The Bakersfield Californian, August 6, 1953, Page 26.
Contents of this site, except where noted, are ©2016-2019 by Jan Burke. While I hope you find this site useful in your family history research, please do not copy material you find here onto your Ancestry trees, etc. without permission.
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 