Teresa Blanche Duffy

We recently had a couple ask for a list of war memorials in the area. We gave them a copy of a map and listing from the newspaper from a number of years ago. Ironically, one missing from the map was one of the earliest and closest. In fact it was from World War One and on the lawn of the Conway Public Library. For more info on the memorial see this link.

Let’s now follow up on one the names on the monument. Teresa Blanche Duffy seems to be the only women on the monument (the gender of some names are hard to tell and further research is needed). To follow her story we used the super powered library edition of Ancestry plus and found her marriage record, indicating she was a nurse.

That gave us the date we needed to check our microfilm collection for the wedding coverage from the local newspaper.

In turn we were able to track them through census records. This in turn gave us more information so we could follow up on where they lived and where she is buried and so on.

So through this process we can get a fuller picture of her life and be able to more properly honor her service to our country. If you are interested in more of the story and especially if you would like to volunteer to help track down more of the names in this and other veteran memorials in the area, please comment us or contact us at the Conway Public Library’s Henney History Room.