George S. Dufford The Hutchinson News Paper Andersonville War Survivor

Company H of the 15th New Jersey Infantry. He was under Captain White and later Captain Cornish, and the regiment was commanded by Colonel Fowler, later Colonel Penrose and finally Lieutenant Colonel Campbell. "GEORGE DUFFORD, one of the oldest residents of River Township in Pawnee County, has attained venerable years. He is now in his eighty-second and bears his weight of experience with remarkable energy and vigor. The experience of his earlier years which distinguishes him from most men now living was his valiant service as a Union soldier during the Civil war. He was one of the Union men who endured the tortures and indignities of prison life in the Andersonville stockade. He had his trials and tribulations as a Western Kansas farmer. It was in the month of February, 1874, that he came out to Pawnee County, traveling by railroad from Virginia to Pawnee Rock. His real success in life has been won in Western Kansas, and there is no more loyal citizen of the state than this old soldier and old time easterner. He was born in Morris County, New Jersey, June 5, 1837, a son of George and Elizabeth (Neighbor) Dufford. His father was born in New Jersey in 1797, spent his career as a farmer, and died in 1864. His wife, a daughter of Leonard Neighbor, who was of German stock, was born in 1800 and died at the age of eighty-four. These parents had thirteen children. Eleven of them grew up: Leonard, Stephen, William, Lawrence, Elijah, Henry, Andrew, George, Elizabeth, who married Philip L. Welch; Sophie, who married Jesse Smith; and Anna, who married John Wirt. Of all the sons George Dufford was the only soldier, and he was also the only one of the family to leave New Jersey to find a home elsewhere ..." SOURCE: William E. Connelley, editor, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (Chicago, Illinois: Lewis Publishing Co., 1919 [revised ed.]), Vol. 4