sold out his business in Dover, and returned to Rochester to settle the estate of his wife's father, Joseph Hanson, an old and wealthy merchant of Rochester, whose daughter Johanna Mr. McDuffee had married June 21, 1829.
There was no bank in Rochester. Mr. McDuffee saw that a bank was needed. He prepared the plans, secured signatures, obtained a charter from the Legislature in 1834, and organized the Rochester Bank. He became cashier, his brother-in-law, Dr. James Farrington, being president.
Cashier for twenty years, on the then renewal of its charter, Mr. McDuffee resigned the cashiership in favor of his son Franklin, and became president. The bank did not become a national bank until 1874, and in the six years previous he and his son formed the house of "John McDuffee & Co., private bankers," took up the old bank's business, and successfully carried it on. In 1874 they merged it in a national bank, the one being president and the other cashier, as before, and the two taking two-fifths of its stock.
Mr. McDuffee was one of the original grantees of the Dover National Bank, and for a short time was a director. He is a heavy stockholder in the Strafford National Bank, and has been an active director since 1870.
The Norway Plains Savings Bank, at Rochester, was chartered in 1851, and Mr. McDuffee became its treasurer, being succeeded by his son Franklin in 1867, and himself becoming president, an office in which he still remains.
Mr. McDuffee early saw the advantages of manufacturing to a community. By his own means and a liberal allowance of banking facilities he has greatly aided their development: the first such enterprise in Rochester, the Mechanics' Manufacturing Company, being decided to locate there by the new banking facilities. Mr. McDuffee was a director. It was a manufacture of blankets, and its successor is the Norway Plains Manufacturing Company. The original company Mr. McDuffee carried safely through the crisis of 1837. The mill property at Gonic Mr. McDuffee bought in 1845 to lease to N. V. Whitehouse, that the business might not be given up. He held his purchase for about ten years. The effort was successful, and the property was eventually taken by a joint-stock company.
Stephen Shorey, owning some facilities for manufacturing at East Rochester, came to Mr. McDuffee to see if the bank would advance means to build. Mr. McDuffee at once pledged the means, and the mills were built. A stock company afterwards purchased mills and machinery, and the thriving village of East Rochester owes its prosperity to Mr. McDuffee's liberal policy. Thus have been developed the three principal water-powers of Rochester.
Mr. McDuffee's personal interests in manufacturing were also in the Great Falls Manufacturing Company, in whose great business he was a director for four years. Capital, one million five hundred thousand dollars. In 1862 he bought large interests in the Cocheco Manufacturing Company, and has there remained. Since 1874 he has been a director of that corporation.
The need of railroad facilities at Rochester was early apparent to Mr. McDuffee. In 1846 he entered into two enterprises,—the Cocheco road, from Dover to Alton Bay, and Conway road, from Great Falls to Conway. Each was to, and did, pass through Rochester.
In each road Mr. McDuffee was the
