At 01:14 AM 01/17/1999 -0800, you wrote: >Hi Darrell, you say that line is wrong. Can you help me by sending me a >copy of what you think and feel is correct. I have been working my my >husband line of Duttons for a very long time. I had Dick Dutton give me >back to John and Mary Need ( I'm not really sure how you spell her last name >I don't have it out in front of me) then he stopped. Could you help me >from that line back as far as you want to go. Or as far as you can go. I >really would like it. >Sincerely with much Thanks. >Donna De Graw degraw@bmi.net > Donna: I'm afraid that what I have to offer is negative. There was a John Dutton who settled in Aston, PA, in the 1600's. He was the subject of Cope's genealogy of the Dutton family. Descendants of the Dutton "group" of Reading, MA in the mid-1600's often use Cope's work, but there is NO proof of a connection between the MA and PA Duttons. Cope suggests there might be, but had no documentation and was careful enough to point out that very fact. The LDS Church's Personal Ancestral File for the Dutton ancestry of Joseph Smith the Prophet is a mess, with one Dutton having his children born over a span of nearly a century, beginning before his *own* birth! It is *OFTEN* reported that the John Dutton who appears on Governor Winthrop's list of passengers in the fleet of 1630 is the ancestor of all the Reading, MA Duttons. That is possibly correct, but I have searched a long time for even a shred of proof. He supposedly married Mary Nield or Neeld, which is PATENTLY INCORRECT. The John Dutton who was of PA married Mary Darlington, and after his death Mary (Darlington) Dutton married a Nield or Neeld. (Don't quote me on her maiden name, I have that third hand and don't even have that e-mail in front of me as I write.) It is often, and possibly correctly, claimed that the Thomas Dutton who was of Reading, Woburn, and Billerica, MA, b. prob. 1619 or 1620, supposedly the son of John, married Susannah Palmer. A careful reading of most such claims shows various discrepancies, such as the marriage taking place on a date when the supposed location had no European inhabitants whatever. In any case, the evidence is never primary or even credibly secondary, and there is no real evidence that her maiden name was Palmer. My best guess is that a Palmer will from London, England, reported in NEHGR, which mentions a cousin Susanna Dutton (not spelled that way), is the block of Jello on which the house of cards has been built. Once you get past the disappointment of accepting that we really DON'T know "zilch" about Thomas' ancestry, you will find that his descendants are pretty well documented and reported. I am copying this to the Dutton list only because I am working from memory, and I want the list members to have the chance to correct me before something I messed up gets chiseled in stone. Darrell formerly of the Dutton District in Springfield, Vermont currently in exile in Addison, Illinois darrellm@sprynet.com