The Duhigg's Passage to North America

John Timothy Duhigg was born at the beginning of the great Irish Famine, on November 11, 1845 in the village of Bruff, County Limerick, Ireland. He was the first child of Timothy Duhigg and Margaret Halloran and when he was three years old they emigrated to North America. His uncle, David Duhigg, was already living in Vermont and the situation in Ireland was dire. (Image above is an illustration from the London Punch, published July 15, 1948. It portrays a poor family in Ireland and a prosperous family living abroad. The caption reads "Here and There; or, Emigration a Remedy.")

Luckily, Bruff was near the city of Limerick which was a major source of emigration into Canada due to the Timber Trade from Canada to Limerick. So outward journeys were advertised by the local timber merchant Francis Spaight & Sons - the the cost of passage was about 3 to 4 pounds. With regular wages for an Irish rural laborer at that time being 7 shillings a week, it took awhile to save up the fare, and then they had to raise the money for "Landing Fees" (a head tax on arrival) and land transportation from the port of arrival to their destination.

By the time they were ready to leave in May 1848, Timothy and Margaret had three children. They brought the oldest (John T., three years old) and the youngest (Patrick, only six weeks old) but they left their two year old daughter, Hannah with other family members.

The voyage took about 45 days and passengers had to bring their own food, water, and bedding. Berths were simple spaces consisting of wooden platforms, usually six foot square and built into the ship’s timbers on either side of the hold, with a gangway down the middle. Each adult was usually allotted one quarter of a bunk, or 18x72 inches of bed space. There was no bedding, which is why passengers were advised to get a mattress before going on board. Passengers had to do their own cooking on deck. Food was often either half-cooked or not cooked at all, since when the weather was bad they were not allowed on deck.

Contagious disease spread rapidly on these ships and when they docked in Miramichi, New Brunswick at the end of July, the children had both contracted smallpox. The infant Patrick was still being breast-fed, so Margaret stayed in New Brunswick with the boys while her husband and brother headed down to Boston to find work. Margaret worked in the hospital laundry to pay for her sons' care. According to the New Brunswick provincial archives, they are listed as John and Pat "Duig", they were in the hospital for 58 days, and they were "destitute."

In November, Timothy returned to collect his family and they caught the last boat out before the freeze. Timothy had found work on the rebuilding of the Holyoke Dam and he took his wife and boys to Northamptom, Massachusetts to live. They changed their names to Dewey in Northampton. Timothy's oldest son, John T. Dewey, was born in Bruff, but he grew up a quintessential American. More on his story in a future post.

A photo of the workers on the Holyoke Dam - created to bring the Industrial Revolution to rural Massachusetts:

Anna and Joan in the Adirondacks

Photo above: Anna Rita Dewey Keeler, in 1940
with her daughter, Joan Barbara, aged 9.

Joan Barbara Keeler Lusk died on March 9th, 1975 (aged 43, in Bassett Hospital, Cooperstown, New York.) Her husband, James Thelbert Lusk and her youngest son, Roy Todd Lusk scattered her ashes at a remote spot in the Adirondaks.

Thirty-two years later, when Joan's mother, Anna Rita Dewey Keeler, passed away (aged 98, in Ilion, New York) Roy guided his uncle, Lee William Keeler, Jr. (Joan's brother and Anna's son) to the same spot, where they scattered Anna's ashes.

Roy wrote: "Uncle Lee and I paddled his canoe to . . . river to spread Grandma’s ashes along with Mom’s. It was very moving for me because it has been 32 years since I was there last (when Dad and I spread Mom’s ashes there). I had fears that I would not recognize the island that Dad and I landed on; would I remember it? Sure enough after paddling a short while (3-4 miles) we came around a corner and there it was; it hit me like it was yesterday that we were there. Uncle Lee and I paddled up to the island, beached and got out. We went to the point of the island and took turns blowing Grandma's ashes off a silver spoon into the water. I read a few prayers from Grandma’s favorite prayer book (where she made notes in the margins about how much she loved the particular prayer). It was a very gray cold day and sort of surreal, the two of us, in the middle of nowhere, spreading Grandma’s ashes, getting her back with mom . . . My grandmother with my mother, Uncle Lee’s mother with his sister."
Photos of Uncle Lee and the river taken by Roy.

Dewey / Duhigg Name Origins

The Duhiggs of Bruff, Ireland changed their names to Dewey when they got to Northampton, Massachusetts in the late 1800s.

Duhigg is an English variant of the Gaelic name O'Dubhthaigh.

O means grandson.
Dubht means black, or swarthy.
Haigh means one who lives near a hedge.

The Duhiggs of Bruff, Limerick to the Deweys of Northampton, Massachusetts.

The little town of Bruff is an ancient settlement in south-central Ireland. The town is beside the Morning Star River, and has mostly been an isolated, sleepy agricultural community. "Bruff" means abode, and the old name for Bruff was "Brúgh na nDéise" meaning the "Residence of the Déisí" (an ancient tribe.) Genetic studies indicate that the 90% of the modern population of Ireland is descended from people who migrated to the island from the Iberian peninsula, at the end of the last ice age (about 10,000 years ago.) A neolithic settlement in Bruff shows archeological evidence of a pre-Celtic farming community dating back to 3000 BC. The Celtic culture and language arrived about 1000 BC, the Vikings in 920 AD, and finally the Normans in 1169 AD. I mention all this ancient history because there's good reason to believe that the people living here didn't move around much, at least once they'd arrived, and that my ancestor, John Duhigg, was descended from these people. (Image is the prehistoric stone henge near Bruff, from IrishMegaliths.org)

John Duhigg was a tenant farmer in the town of Bruff, County Limerick, Ireland in the late-1700s. The struggle between the Irish and the English had been underway for 600 years and Cromwell had decimated the Irish Catholics about 100 years before John was born. During Cromwell’s Reign of Terror, over 100,000 Irish children, generally from 10 to 14 years old, were sold as slaves in the Amazon, West Indies, Virginia and New England. Another 50,000 adults were forcibly delivered to the same places as indentured servants. (Image is Bruff in 1840, from PastHomes.com)

On June 4, 1801 John Duhigg passed his lease on (approximately 30 acres on the farm of Ballinlee) to his son Bartholomew. The family legend is that Bartholomew was a hedgerow teacher, one who secretly taught Irish history and Gaelic behind the hedges of the countryside after the English had outlawed it. The hedgerow teachers were also ideally situated to note the troop movements of the British and pass along the information to the resistance. This was not a safe profession - whatever happened to Bartholomew, he didn't apparently pass along the tenant's lease to his sons.

Bartholomew was married to Honora Rierdon and they had a daughter, Catherine and two sons, David and Timothy.

Bartholomew's older son, David Duhigg, was born about 1811 in Bruff. David married Elinor Riordan and came to Vermont in 1842, with their infant son, Dennis. Dennis was on his way to a career in the Law, as a student at Dartmouth College, when the Civil War began and President Lincoln called for Volunteers. He raised a company of men from his home state of Vermont, and was killed at the Battle of Opequon/Winchester, VA in 1864.

Bartholomew's younger son, Timothy Duhigg married Margaret Halloran, daughter of Michael Halloran and Catherine Connolly, at Bruff, Limerick on 4 April 1843. Timothy and Margaret with their two small sons John T. and Patrick, decided to join Timothy's brother and make the voyage to North America. (The Potato Famine had begun in 1845. Over 1 million people died and and another million left the country.) The Duhigg family boarded a ship called the Hawkins or John Hawkins in Limerick harbour in the fall of 1848, accompanied by Margaret's brother, Patrick Halloran. They arrived at Miramichi, New Brunswick in July at which time the two little boys were found to have smallpox and they were quarantined in the Emigrant Hospital at St. John. Margaret remained there to work in the hospital laundry in order to pay for their care, while her husband Timothy and brother Patrick Halloran, headed for Boston to try and find work. Months later they returned, at which time the children were well enough to travel and they all went to Northampton, Massachusetts where Timothy had found work on the rebuilding of the Holyoke dam. It was apparently in Northampton that they began spelling their name Dewey, perhaps because in Irish pronunciation the gg has a very soft sound. (Image is photo of Margaret Halloran Duhigg, taken in 1870, at the age of 55, after her husband Timothy's death.)

The rest of the story, about the Deweys in Northampton, continues in future posts.
(Image below is Main Street in Bruff, about 1900, from Bruff History blog.)