Daniel Andrew  DIGGINS

Danny’s grandparents were first generation Irish Americans, Patrick and Mary Finn Diggins. They settled in Belchertown around 1870. They met and married a few years after each had made the journey from southwest Ireland to the USA.
Danny’s father was a railroad worker for many years and was single until age 43, when he married Danny’s mother, Anna Schwartz, in 1918. Danny grew up in Scotia, Schenectady, New York. The house he grew up in, on Engleman Avenue, is still a residence, and although the houses have been updated, the street looks much as it did in the 1930’s.

Danny helped his uncles who were farmers (Schwartz side of the family) with harvesting vegetables, washing them in the Mohawk River, taking them by wagon to market and counting the money on the way home. He recounted these memories with great fondness. Danny graduated from Scotia High School in 1937 and from a two-year program in agriculture from the New York School of Agriculture, Cobleskill, NY, in 1941. He was also a great early radio enthusiast. WGY-AM began broadcasting Aug 1922, Schenectady, NY., and was one of the first commercial radio stations in the U.S. He loved airplanes and was co-owner of a 2-seater in the late 1950s, but could not get a pilot’s license because of his eyesight.

During WW II Danny worked in the dairy industry under the Farm Deferment, essential industries, until April 1944, when he requested release from his deferment to join the US Army Air Forces. He worked in radio and radar and was stationed in Alaska.

After the war he bought a motorcycle and traveled across the country, finding work wherever he went. Upon return he studied automobile mechanics and became a mechanic for the New Jersey State Police.
He married Elizabeth Revell, a registered nurse from Hagerstown, MD, in Feb 1954. They lived in Raritan Township, Hazlet, NJ until 1961, when they moved to the Hagerstown area, purchased a small farm in Smithsburg, MD and reared their four children.

photo/ portrait (above) from findagrave.com