Born: September 12, 1818, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Died: July 6, 1888, Bloomfield, New Jersey, at the home of his son Samuel.
Buried: Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan.
George was the father of hymnologist Samuel Duffield.
Duffield graduated from Yale University in 1837, and from Union Theological Seminary in 1840.
Ordained a Presbyterian minister, like his father and grandfather, he first pastored at the Fifth Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York, for seven years. He then served at the First Church of Bloomfield, New Jersey (1847–52), and the Central Presbyterian Church of the Northern Liberties in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1852–61).
There he found a mortgaged church building in a neighborhood from which the population was moving westward, a congregation reduced in numbers, disheartened, and unable to meet its financial obligations. Duffield held on until 1861, when he resigned his pastorate.
He later served at Adrian, Michigan (1861–65); Galesburg, Illinois (1865–69); then Saginaw (1869), Ann Arbor and Lansing, Michigan (from 1869).
He was also on the Board of Regents for the University of Michigan, and received a DD degree from Knox College.