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Owen J. Durgin, my great-great grandfather was born in Ireland in 1813, and emigrated to the USA .. coming to Maine about 1848. Either moving there, or being attracted to jobs in the Biddeford Saco & Saco River Valley area from Boston arrival, he came to live in Westbrook, Maine ..where he raised a family, farmed, did whatever work he could find. He lost his wife to illness and as the census for 1870 below shows, he and his chidren lived without her .. she died in a Westbrook Alms House & Hospital in 1873 .. the 19th century equivalent of a public charity hospital. Their daughter Mary Ann Durgin, my great-grandmother, would marry Charles Henry Scott of Portland, Maine. Owen Francis Connolly, my father, was named for his grandfather Owen J. Durgin; and the name Owen, per Sarah Scott Connolly, my paternal grandmother, bears the ancestry of the Welsh in the family. Owen J. Durgin Jr., my great-great-uncle bore his father's name, and lived his life in Portland, Maine and worked as a clerk for the Boston & Maine Railway Company. Durgin became the famly name spelling, and is also spelled as Dargen. It is the Anglo-Irish ancestral name of William Durgin, also spelled Dargen who settled Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine in the 1630's .. and who was a sea captain.
Owen J. Durgin Jr.
Westbrook Cemetery |