14H.  Emma Ina Youngblood was born in Lawrence, Michigan, on Wednesday, July 31, 1895, and died in Oshtemo, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on May 4, 1986. Eugene Joseph Duffy was born in Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday, October 16, 1894, and died in Oshtemo on August 31, 1963. They were both buried in Lakeview Cemetery, South Haven, Michigan. They were married in South Haven, Van Buren County, Michigan, on Tuesday, September 23, 1913. She took the name Emma Ina Duffy. She is the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Margaret Lydia (Tenbroeck) Youngblood. He is the son of Owen and Mary (_____) Duffy. They had four children:

Walter Gilbert, author of this genealogy relates:

Emma Duffy ca. 1928

Altho Emma was my mother's aunt, friends and family alike adored her and called her "Aunt Emma". During my childhood years, we frequently visited her and Uncle Duff; it was a favorite outing. During this time, they lived on a 29-acre tract west of Kalamazoo on what originally was US Rte 12. They ran an antique business and virtually all of their items were outdoors on an assortment of unfinished wooden tables, completely exposed to the elements. Most times, Uncle Duff was on an antique foraging trip with his large stake bed truck; therefore, we didn't see nearly as much of him as of her. Aunt Emma was always pleasant, she spoke with a lilt in her voice and frequently laughed her distictive laugh. She loved playing cards.

Theirs was a simple three-room house heated with a pot-bellied stove in the living room. The out-house was 30 feet away out the back door. Water came from a pump out the back door. Only in her latest years did she have indoor plumbing and hot water. The back entrance-way was converted to a bathroom so one entered the house thru the bathroom. Aunt Emma liked that because she was so proud to show it off.

She was always home in case someone stopped by to look at their antiques. The house was accompanied by numerous ramshackle sheds that came and went thru the years. Some housed goats or chickens, others were for feed, wood and coal, etc. For awhile they sold goat's milk to people allergic to cow's milk. In the summer, the undulating, unmaintained field behind the house abounded with wild blackberry bushes; it was always a special treat to go berry picking, returning with buckets and bellies full, and exposed skin covered with purple stains and red scratches.

While Emma's brothers and sisters might have lived more prosperous lives, she always gave the impression of being competely relaxed and happy. However, the single tooth visible in her mouth and use of her house as a fire training exercise spoke to a fairly subsistance lifestyle. But she never complained, and it's only in hindsight that I realize what she did without.

Gene Duffy related the following story of his childhood to his niece, Dorothy Gilbert. (His family sometimes referred to him as "Owen". His mother called him "Owney".)

He was born and raised in Chicago. By age ten his father had left the family and his mother had a live-in "uncle". This situation was not thought to be suitable for a ten-year-old child, so he was put in a boarding school run by Catholic brothers. There was something different about his status, maybe his mother did not pay any tuition for him. He was never given any education, he and another boy lived in the pig house and looked after the pigs. [I am sure they did not sleep with the pigs, there was probably a separate room for them to sleep in. It may have been a big hog-raising operation.]

A railroad track ran nearby. One day he asked another boy about a passing train. The boy reported this to the brothers. The "head brother" thought Eugene was contemplating running away. He was questioned and protested his innocence. Nevertheless he was tied to a post in the middle of the square and beaten severely. He had been beaten before, but this time there were conspicuous welts that his mother saw when she came to visit. She removed him immediately after making it clear to the management that she would not put up with this kind of treatment.

She then put him in a hotel. As he recalled, a friend of hers let him live in a tiny room under the stairs where he had a bed and a small chair. He was not allowed to go out during the day because he would be picked up for truancy. [It can be inferred that his family could not afford to send him to a Catholic school, and they did not want him to learn to read and write in public school. After school hours he could wander the streets.

Eugene met an entertainer in a tavern who paid him a small sum to pass the hat. This type of entertaining came naturally to him and he easily picked up some patter and dance routines; soon he was an important part of the act. When his entertainer sponsor saw his living conditions, he said his widowed mother would like to have him live with her for company, and would enjoy cooking for him, seeing that he had a decent home. By the time he was 12, he was her lover, enjoying every bit of it. He became successful as an entertainer, having his own routines and teaching dancing, no longer a part of some other entertainer's act. [I don't know how he ended up across the lake in South Haven. Since he was an entertainer, I conclude that he may have found that he could do well entertaining the rich "resorters" who came from Chicago to spend the summer in South Haven.]

Dorothy relates:

Somehow he met 17-year-old Emma Youngblood, he couldn't have been much older himself. [He was actually 11 years older than she.] Emma said they were walking hand in hand on the streets of South Haven, he said, "Let's get married." She agreed. So they did. Her mother was frantic. Her beautiful daughter, the big hope of the family, was not going to graduate from high school. She had married a big city fellow, a Roman Catholic, probably a white slaver. This guy smoked cigarettes, probably drank liquor. They couldn't even talk to him, he couldn't talk to them. At first, Gene and Emma lived in Chicago. She took instruction, and agreed to raise their children, if any, as Catholics. This was an incredibly cruel blow to Margaret Lydia (TenBroeck) Youngblood.

At one time, Gene and Emma had a combined Duffy's Express and antique dealership on Phoenix Road in the center of South Haven. The "Express" meant that Uncle Duff met the boat, hauled the luggage to the various hotels (he had hired helpers, one an Italian named Santo.

They were visiting my mother and me when their first child, "Little Gene" (Eugene Keith), contracted diphtheria. Doctor Lang was called to 1930 E. Cork and diagnosed the condition as soon as he entered the door. Evidently the odor is unmistakable. Little Gene was sent to Fairmount Hopsital, "the pest house". At that time, that was the way communicable diseases were treated. All other family members considered at risk were given "toxin anti-toxin".

Nobody could visit Fairmount. Since we had no phone, we would go to the barber shop at the corner of Cork and Portage to call for a report. He was supposed to be doing well at the latest report so I will never forget seeing my Aunt Emma running across the street to my mother's car where we were awaiting the news. Right away you knew. He was dead. This was my favorite cousin. I couldn't see why one of the ones I didn't like couldn't have died instead."

I have no idea how Uncle Duff accumulated a trunk-full of costumes, grease paint, wigs, all the accoutrements of an actor, or how long it took. I was probably in my teens when I first saw all that stuff. I was fascinated by it. I wanted to paint myself up, but I wasn't allowed to touch it. He had costumes and routines for a "Happy Hooligan", a "foolish kid", a clown with huge feet (manufactured by Aunt Emma), and others. One time for the Blossom Parade in Benton Harbor, he rode in a cart that he had built and had pulled by a pair of the goats he and Aunt Emma raised. During the Big Depression he was a beneficiary of a grant for the Council for the Arts which employed artists, actors, musicians, those who were unable to get work in their fields. That would have been in the 1930s.

I don't know when they gave up the Duffy's Express and concentrated on the antique business. There was always a truck; stuff had to be hauled. They had a series of shops-cum-residences in Benton Harbor, Coloma, Watervliet, and White Pigeon. When I had to go to Missouri where my husband was working to restore Fort Leonard Wood, I left Walter with Aunt Emma in White Pigeon, left Jud with the Gilberts in Kalamazoo. This had to be shortly after Jud was born in 1940 because he—the baby—had to be left at home with his paternal grandparents.

• Janette (Duffy) Benson and Dorothy (Galbreath) Gilbert Kli>Dennis Benson; 1999