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
William Blanchard (comedian) William Blanchard (comedian) William Blanchard (1769–1835) was an English comedian. Blanchard was born in York on 2 January 1769, and for a few years was educated at a private school in that city. Losing both his father, John Blanchard, and his mother, whose maiden name was Clapham, while he was still a child, he was left to the care of his uncle, William Blanchard, long well known as the proprietor of the "York Chronicle", by whom he was reared with a tenderness seldom displayed even by a parent. In 1782 he was placed in his uncle's office. He took such