Duffield, George (junr)

Author

b Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA 1818, d Bloomfield, New Jersey, USA 1888. Born into a Presbyterian family, he graduated from Yale Univ and Union Theological Seminary prior to ordination in 1840. His gift for building up small congregations emerged in his diverse pastorates in a 44-year ministry successively in Brooklyn, NY; Bloomfield, NJ; Philadelphia, Penns; Adrian, Michigan; Galesburg, Illinois; and Saginaw, Ann Arbor, and Lansing, Mich. He was a regent of the Univ of Michigan for 7 years, and edited the Presbyterian family paper the Christian Observer. In 1871 Knox Coll awarded him an Hon DD. He retired to Bloomfield with his son Samuel W Duffield, who in 1886 wrote English Hymns, Their Authors and History. Probably the most dramatic moments of his ministry were linked with the events leading to the writing of his best known hymn; to him, the dying words of his friend Dudley Ting (see notes) were ‘as if he had said, “Stand up for Jesus in the person of the downtrodden slave