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.)
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