Mary Gordon Duffee‘s father, born 25 December 1803, died 1878. Planted his own orchard in 1852 on the northern slope of Duffee’s Mountain at Blount Springs, covering over a hundred acres, with three named apple varieties. In 1857 he won a silver cup at the Alabama State Fair in Montgomery for the largest and finest celery exhibited.
Appears in: Duffee Family Cemetery.
Notable descendants:
- William Henry Duffee (1832-1908), George G Duffee (1835-1886), Capt James Knox Duffee (1837-?), Mary Gordon Duffee (1844-1920) - his documented children, confirmed via Find a Grave.
- Grandchildren via William Henry Duffee: Martha Ella Duffee (1874-1949); Cecil Gravlee Duffee Sr (1882-1960); Daniel Jackson Duffee Sr (1886-1974); Walter George Duffee (1892-1985)
- Grandchildren via George G Duffee: George Gillespie Duffee (1869-1944); Ruth Duffee (1872-1916); Grace Duffee Richards (1874-1953); Julian Duffee (1876-1959); Nellie Duffee Crossland (1878-1947); Winthrop Horton Duffee (1880-1961)
- Mary Gordon Duffee (1844-1920), the writer and historian with her own entry on this site, is confirmed here as his daughter.
- He built the Duffee House at Blount Springs. Matthew Duffee ran Washington Hall and the Indian Queen Hotel in Tuscaloosa, and in the 1850s bought the former Goffe House at Blount Springs and renamed it the Duffee House. The family summered there before moving permanently just before the Civil War, and he bought the adjoining ridge - Duffee’s Mountain - as a home site. Alongside the hotel he raised flowers and food crops. The war ruined the business, leaving the family living on the generosity of neighbours. He was buried in a family graveyard near their cottage, where his widow and their youngest daughter, Mary Gordon Duffee, were later buried with him.
- The family name was changed on the voyage over. His father John and mother Elan Kennedy emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, arriving 4 February 1822, and Americanised the name from Duhey to Duffee aboard ship. Matthew settled at Tuscaloosa in 1823. He married Martha Gillespy, daughter of Irish immigrants settled in Tennessee, in 1832; their four children were William H., George Gillespie, Margaret Kerr Gillespie and Mary Gordon.
Who ran the Goffe House before him. The hotel Duffee bought and renamed was operated in the 1850s and early 1860s by Capt. Benjamin Harrison Sapp Sr. (1813-1863) and his wife Harriett - Sapp also serving as Blount Springs Justice of the Peace and Postmaster - the father of Henry Clay Sapp. Sapp went to war as Captain of the “Blount County Tiger Boys,” Company F of the 29th Alabama Infantry, and died of smallpox at Mobile in 1863.