W. C. Fields by Himself", it was shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged from his wife), and financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of a working-class family. His father, James Lydon Dukenfield (1840–1913), was from an English family that emigrated from Sheffield, England in 1854. James Dukenfield served in Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War and was wounded in 1863. Fields' mother, Kate Spangler Felton (1854–1925), was a Protestant of British ancestry. The 1876 "Philadelphia City Directory "lists James Dukenfield
Claude Raguet Hirst Beginning in the 1870s, she truncated her name to "Claude", possibly to avoid the sexism that stymied many women artists of the era. Hirst moved to New York City by 1880, where the promise of training, employment, and fame lured many of her contemporaries. Her mother and sister followed her there shortly after, leaving the alcoholic Percy Hirst in Ohio, where he soon died. Hirst rented a studio in Greenwich Village where she befriended landscape painter William Crothers Fitler. The pair married in 1901. Whilst in New York, Hirst taught art and took private lessons from Agnes Dean Abbatt, Charles