Origins

The Charles Wells residence, Burlington, Vermont
birthplace of:
Parmelee Wells Duffus, Oct 19, 1915
Ruth McGlashan Duffus, Sept 10, 1917
William Wright Duffus, Aug 30, 1920

The Duffus Family Name

The name of DUFFUS (pronounced DUFF'-US) derives from the lands of DUFFUS in Morayshire, Scotland. What is presently known as DUFFUS PARISH encompasses the lands of the ancient BARONY OF DUFFUS and comprises 9,565 acres. The DUFFUS name has undergone a variety of spelling changes through the years; in 1290, "DUFHUS", and in 1512, "DUFFOUS". The name is probably a compilation of two Gaelic words, dubh and uisg, meaning "darkwater" or "blackwater". At one time, the region was below sea-level and the Loch of Spynie and stagnant pools of water were a conspicuous feature of the area.

- from www.duffus.com

John McGlashan Duffus
- from "Notes on The Duffus Family," as set down by Leah Louise (Deane) Duffus in November 1975,
with corrections and suggestions from William M. Duffus, given by him in March 1947.

John McGlashan Duffus, the father of William McGlashan Duffus and Robert Luther Duffus and Marjorie Alice Duffus Bryan, was born May 14, 1853, in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. One of seven children, his father was William Duffus, born 1824 in Scotland.  William was an expressman and later a member of a brewery firm. He was tall: 6 feet, 4 inches. In 1851 he married Margaret McGlashan, who was born in Scotland in 1830 or earlier.

William, the father, died in 1861 at 37 years of age of tuberculosis. Margaret, his wife, died in 1907, aged 77 years or more.
John McGlashan's schooling stopped at eight years of age when his mother became a widow. We worked one year for a bookseller' and at fourteen years he was apprenticed to his uncle to learn the granite-cutting trade. He came to the United States in 1873, aged twenty years, and landed at Mt. Desert Island, Maine. He worked as a stone-cutter in St. George, New Brunswick, in Burlington, Vermont, and later in St. Louis, Missouri, with Mr. James Marr as a partner.

In the Barre Daily Times of September 26, 1936, Mr. William Barclay wrote in one of a series of articles on "Barre's Scottish Population" - "Two of the footloose young Scots, John Duffus and James P. Marr, came and worked for a short time in the summer of 1880; later purchasing the retail memorial business of Foster in Waterbury, Vermont, but both returning to Barre several years later".

He was tall: 6 feet, 3 inches, and weighed as a young man in good health 225 pounds, but later about 175 pounds. He had black hair and "black" eyes. He became a member of the Free and Accepted Order of Masons of New Brunswick, June 6, 1875, and a Master Mason in Vermont, March 2, 1896. He got his final U. S. citizens papers in Burlington, Vermont, in the early 1890's.

John Duffus met and married Helen Gertrude Graves in Waterbury, Vermont on April 22, 1884, by the Reverend Mr. Wheeler. She was born in Waterbury, Vermont, November 2, 1855, and died in Madison, Wisconsin, February 5, 1915, aged 59 years and three months.  Her mother, Mary Ann Wright, was born August 21, 1830, in Geneva, New York, where she met and was married to Josiah Snow Graves the, after his death, to Luther Davis, a widower and carpenter who had a farm on the Winooski River.

It was on this farm that the Duffus children were born: William McGlashan on January 20, 1886; Robert Luther on July 10, 1888; Marjorie Alice on June 21, 1892.

John Duffus, his health failing, went in February 1905 with his son William to Redlands, California, then to Los Gatos, and last to Palo Alto in 1906. In 1907 he and William went out to Stanford where they lived in Cedro Cottage with Professor Thorstein Veblen and worked for him. There John Duffus died October 8, 1907, 54 years, 5 months of age. The autopsy showed the cause of his death as "myocarditis and edema of the lungs". There was some granite dust in them, but that was not considered a cause of death.

William McGlashan Duffus

  
The William McGlashan Duffus Family
Parmelee Wells, Effie Parmelee, Ruth McGlashan, William McGlashan, and William Wright

William McGlashan Duffus married Effie Parmelee Wells, in October, 1914.  By  1920 they had settled in Newton, Massachusetts and were raising a family.

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