Recently I’ve done something that I intended to do for a very long time. I posted an outline of my Dutton research as a public family tree on Ancestry.com. Increasingly, this is where genealogists hang out and if I hope to get in touch and stay in touch with cousins, I thought I’d better make a presence here.
In the process of this, I worked through the first couple of generations of the Matilda Dutton Bass family: examining primary sources, making connections, and synthesizing the research of others. One persistent doubt remained, though: Did we know for sure how Matilda connects to Zachariah Sr.? Were we indeed confident that, as I’d presented it in the tree, she was the daughter of the long-lost Zachariah Jr.? Or could it be that Matilda Dutton who married Elijah Bass was in fact, somehow, the daughter of Zachariah Sr.? Was there any way to know for sure?
When I examined the problem before, on the heels of my first discovery of this family, I approached it very conservatively. For years, the unquestioned assumption had been that Matilda Dutton, daughter of Zachariah Dutton Sr., was the oldest child, who never married and died an older lady sometime soon after her father. This was difficult to challenge, and the fact is, I must admit, I wanted Matilda Dutton Bass to be the daughter of Zachariah Jr.: I had rediscovered and reconnected, so I thought, a missing branch of the family. I didn’t want to lose Zachariah Jr. again so soon after apparently finding him.
But after immersing myself in the Matilda Dutton Bass family and coming to appreciate them as a branch in their own right, I returned to the problem of Matilda’s origins with fresh eyes. I’ve come to see that losing a Zachariah Jr. branch but gaining a Matilda branch might not be so bad after all — especially if it’s the truth. And I find the pieces finally falling together, and the evidence appearing more and more convincing, that Matilda Dutton Bass is the same person as Matilda Dutton, daughter of Zachariah Sr.
Table of Contents
- Background
- Tantalizing DNA
- Back to the Beginning
- A DNA Smoking Gun
- Summary and Conclusion
- Next Steps
Background
We first discovered the Matilda Dutton Bass family several years ago through autosomal DNA testing with Family Tree DNA’s Family Finder. My cousins and I began to see consistent connections to a Bass family in Ohio and Wisconsin. When we contacted Anthony Di Dio, he told us they were descended from Matilda Dutton, who was born ca. 1807 in North Carolina, married Elijah Bass in 1835, and died after 1870 in Lawrence County, Ohio or possibly Vernon County, Wisconsin. He also sent us Elijah Bass Jr.’s Eastern Cherokee application, which identified his grandparents, the parents of Matilda Dutton Bass, as Zachariah Dutton and Mary Dutton.
The DNA was conclusive: this family is connected to ours. Matilda’s birthplace in North Carolina placed her within reach. But how, then, was she connected? From here, I leapt. I presumed that Zachariah Dutton Sr. had no more children after the death of his first wife in about 1798; I knew that Zachariah Dutton Jr. was married and having children around this time; so I concluded, with no direct evidence, that Matilda must be the daughter of Zachariah Jr. rather than Zachariah Sr.
There is no direct evidence to indicate that Zachariah Dutton Jr. had a daughter named Matilda who was born ca. 1807. There is, in fact, evidence to suggest otherwise. By 1807, Zachariah Dutton Jr. was living in eastern North Carolina in Brunswick County. He appears on the 1810 census in Brunswick County, North Carolina, married — but with a son under the age of ten, not a daughter.
- Z. Dutton
- 1 white male under 10
- 2 white males aged 26-44
- 1 white female aged 26-44
- 38 slaves
I reasoned that the listing of a son might be in error, or perhaps Matilda Dutton Bass’s age was fudged, and she was actually born after 1810 — but this is pure speculation contrary to the evidence; there is nothing to support this. Every census on which Matilda Bass appears, 1850, 1860, and 1870, places her birthdate as between 1800 and 1810 (1850 indicates ca. 1807, 1860 indicates ca. 1801, and 1870 indicates ca. 1809).
On the other hand, Zachariah Dutton Sr. is known and documented to have had a daughter named Matilda. She is named in his will, and shown buying in his estate sale following his death in 1829, and appears on the 1830 census in Granville County, North Carolina. Nothing else is known about her, and the speculation that she was the oldest child (she is named first in Zachariah’s will), who was born ca. 1775, and who never married, had never been questioned.
A year ago, I began having serious doubts about the identification of Matilda Dutton Bass as the daughter of Zachariah Jr., and made an examination of the evidence. At the time, I concluded that the evidence was inconclusive: that there was a lot to scratch my head over, but not enough to overturn the long-held assumption that Matilda was the oldest daughter. I doubted there would ever be a way to know for sure.
Then recently, I’ve been wondering: What if we could know for sure? How could we know for sure? This week, I buckled on my toolbelt — all the tools I could muster — DNA, records, and reasoning — and took another whack at it. And in the end, quite unexpectedly, I believe I’ve convinced myself.
Tantalizing DNA
I have had in my mind for a long time to attempt a detailed statistical analysis of the DNA connections between the Matilda Dutton Bass family and other Dutton cousins: to compare the matches against statistical relationship estimates and determine based on this whether it was more likely if Matilda Dutton Bass was a daughter or granddaughter of Zachariah Dutton.
This proved even simpler than I expected. I had been putting it off for a long time, expecting to find a complex mathematical problem, but when I at last sat down with it, I discovered that a lot of the work had already been done for me by the Shared cM Project. Blaine T. Bettinger, The Genetic Genealogist, has compiled detailed data based on a large and growing sample of known relationships across genealogical DNA tests. Using his calculated average and expected shared cM numbers for each known relationship, and his histograms of the ranges in which occurrences of each finding of shared cM might fall, I calculated the likelihood of Matilda’s relationship across about a dozen DNA tests.
To my disappointment, these results were inconclusive. There was no smoking gun, one way or the other. Despite having a dozen or so tests to work with, my sample is very limited, especially on the Bass side. Anthony Di Dio’s test was consistently the best representative, with the most and the best matches to other branches of the family. Howard Bass’s test also has many matches, bolstered by the fact that he is descended from two different Bass-Dutton lines (his parents were first cousins) — but this double-descent also complicates the matter, since this endogamy throws his results very far off from the compiled estimates. What is more, I found that the known matches could acceptably support either hypothesis for Matilda’s relationship to Zachariah Sr.
As I neared the end of my analysis, I realized with a start that I’d made a mistaken assumption: Matilda Dutton Bass’s descendants would not be merely third cousins, etc., to descendants of other branches of the Dutton family, but half-third cousins: Because in the second theory, if Matilda Dutton were the daughter of Zachariah Dutton Sr., she would not be a full sister to the other Dutton siblings, but a half-sister, almost certainly the daughter of Zachariah’s second wife, Judith Parrish Dutton.
Unfortunately, Bettinger’s sample is not yet large enough to provide statistical histograms for half-cousin relationships at the distances we are looking at. I still have high hopes for this avenue of research, though. Perhaps in the future, with more data, we will be able to draw firmer conclusions. Perhaps, too, I will be able to examine the DNA matches of more Bass-Dutton descendants. If you are a Dutton-Bass descendant and have tested your DNA, I would appreciate your help. (See “Next Steps” at the end.)
Back to the Beginning
The other day, I decided to go back to the beginning of the available records for the Zachariah Dutton family and examine them with fresh eyes. Was the thesis that Matilda Dutton, daughter of Zachariah Sr., was his oldest child, born ca. 1775, supportable? Or was it possibly more supportable that Matilda was a younger daughter, perhaps the daughter of Zachariah by his second wife Judith Parrish?
Judith Parrish Dutton
An essential point of embarkation must be Judith Parrish Dutton herself. Who was she and what do we know about her?
We know that Judith Parrish was the widow of Claiborne Parrish of Granville County, North Carolina, and that her maiden name was also Parrish. Judith Parrish married Claiborne Parrish on 6 February or 6 January 1779 in Granville County (there is some discrepancy in the date between record transcriptions). They were married about 16 years before Claiborne died in 1795. This would seem to suggest that if Judith were a young woman when she married Claiborne (born perhaps between 1760 and 1763), she might be about 32 when he died, about 37 when she married Zachariah Dutton in 1799, and conceivably still able to bear another child.
Is this hypothesis consistent with what we can see from the census? The woman of Zachariah Dutton’s household in 1800, identified as Judith, appears to have been born between 1756 and 1774 (aged between 26 and 44). We can probably exclude her having been born after about 1766 (younger than this, and she would have been too young to marry in 1779). In 1810, the woman of the house is over 45, that is, born before 1765. So we can definitively fix Judith’s birthdate as being between 1756 and 1765 — on average, about 1760.
If Judith were 40 years old in 1800, having a child at 47 would not be entirely out of the question. If Judith were slightly younger and Matilda were slightly older (one census has Matilda being born about 1801), Judith being Matilda’s mother would begin to seem more and more feasible. Indeed, if Judith were only about 37 when she married Zachariah in 1799, it might be surprising if they had no children together.
Thanks to Don Bynum for his help with understanding the Parrish family.
The Census Reexamined
I already spent a substantial post reexamining Zachariah Dutton in the census records with a revisionist’s eye, attempting to evaluate the ages and birth order of his children.
I made a few significant changes (I’m now fairly convinced that Zachariah Dutton Jr. was the oldest son), but there is one basic assumption I scarcely challenged: that Matilda Dutton was the oldest child overall, that she was already an older spinster by the time of Zachariah’s death, and that she died unmarried. Looking at it critically, I now realize that this is an assumption without real evidence. Let us look at the evidence once again and ask what it actually shows.
What we know for fact about Matilda Dutton, daughter of Zachariah Dutton Sr., is scant:
- Zachariah Dutton Sr. had a daughter named Matilda, as named in his will.
- Matilda was not married at the time of Zachariah’s will and death — she is named as Matilda Dutton while her married sister Elizabeth was named as Elizabeth Bailey.
- Matilda was a purchaser in Zachariah’s estate sale, and is listed as a householder on the census in 1830. So know, at least, that she was not a minor, and this would at least hint that she might be an older lady; I can’t think of many cases in which an unmarried woman under 30 was listed on an early census as a householder. This is certainly not enough for an ironclad assumption that she was an older lady, though.
What we know about Matilda Dutton Bass is also scant:
- She was born in North Carolina, probably Granville County, between 1801 and 1809 (the 1850 census indicates ca. 1807; the 1860 census indicates ca. 1801; the 1870 census indicates ca. 1809).
- She is definitively connected to the family of Zachariah Dutton Sr., by autosomal DNA matches. Her son, Elijah Bass Jr., reported that her parents were Zachariah Dutton and Mary Dutton.
- She married Elijah Bass Sr., in 1835. Elijah Bass likewise hailed from Granville County, North Carolina. The marriage is recorded legally in Lawrence County, Ohio on 20 March 1835, where they later resided; but their oldest son Elijah Bass Jr. consistently said on the census that he was born in North Carolina, and gave his birthdate as 15 October 1835. So the logistics of the Basses in 1835 are not entirely clear.
- Matilda Dutton Bass died after 1870, either in Lawrence County, Ohio, or in Vernon County, Wisconsin. Elijah Bass died after 1880 in Vernon County, Wisconsin.
With these facts in mind, let us proceed to the census records.
1790 Federal Census, Charles County, Maryland
- Zachariah Dutton
- 1 white male over 16
- 5 white males under 16
- 2 white females over 16
- 3 slaves
The white male over 16 is clearly Zachariah, and one of the two females is his unknown first wife. The five male children are also easily identifiable: The 1850 and later censuses indicate that Zachariah’s sons Stephen, Edmond, and Samuel were all born after 1790 (in 1792, 1793, and 1797 respectively), so we can conclude that the sons in 1790 are Zachariah Jr., William, John, Alexander, and Gerrard.
1 white male over 16: Zachariah Dutton.
5 white males under 16: Zachariah Dutton Jr., William Dutton, John Dutton, Alexander Dutton, and Gerrard Dutton.
2 white females: Mrs. Zachariah Dutton, and one daughter.
But what of the other of the two females? We know from his will that Zachariah had two daughters, Matilda and Elizabeth. We have always assumed, since Darlene Cole’s initial speculation sheet, that the daughter in 1790 was Matilda — but there is no concrete reason why this must be so. All we know is that Elizabeth was married in 1817, and Darlene assumed from this date that Elizabeth was a younger, marriable lady, possibly born as late as 1798. But in my previous article, I have already challenged this assumption: William Bailey her husband was apparently an older widower, and Elizabeth bore him no children. And if the widow Elizabeth Bailey on the 1830 census of Granville County is our lady, then she was born between 1780 and 1790, and apparently she, not Matilda, was the daughter present in Zachariah’s household in 1790.
Which would mean that Matilda was not the oldest daughter, and was born sometime after 1790. This is frankly a startling realization.
1800 Federal Census, Granville County, North Carolina
- Zachariah Dutton
- 7 free white males under 10
- 1 free white male aged 10-15
- 3 free while males aged 16-25
- 1 free white male 45 or over
- 1 free white female under 10
- 1 free while female aged 10-15
- 2 free white females aged 16-25
- 1 free while female aged 26-44
- 1 slave
Attempting to break this down:
1 free white male 45 or over: Zachariah Dutton, born before 1755.
1 free while female aged 26-44: Judith, born between 1756 and 1774.
3 free while males aged 16-25: These are probably Zachariah Jr. (born ca. 1776), William (born ca. 1777), and John (born ca. 1778).
1 free white male aged 10-15: Probably Alexander (born between 1785 and 1790).
7 free white males under 10: There are too many boys here to just be our Dutton sons. We can identify Gerrard (born ca. 1789/90), Stephen (born ca. 1792), Edmond (born 1793), and Samuel (born ca. 1797). Joseph Parrish was apparently born ca. 1794; the older Parrish sons, Humphrey and Woody, were apparently older. So that leaves two unidentified boys here.
The younger females here are more difficult to identify.
1 free while female aged 10-15: If we assume, as above, that Elizabeth was born between 1780 and 1790, then this would be her, narrowing her birthdate to between 1785 and 1790.
2 free white females aged 16-25: These could both be Parrish daughters (born between 1775-86). We know, according to Claiborne Parrish’s entry in the 1784-1787 tax list, that there were two Parrish daughters born by 1787 — this is probably them.
1 free white female under 10: It could be Zachariah’s daughter Matilda, born between 1790 and 1800 — in which case it would be a stretch for her to be the same person as Matilda Dutton Bass. Or it could be another Parrish daughter. Some researchers online have supposed that Omah Parrish, born ca. 1790, who married John Dutton, was the daughter of Claiborne and Judith Parrish, and this would fit if she were — though there is no documentation of this. Another possibility is Lucy Parrish (born ca. 1795-1804, according to the 1820 census), who married Howell Briggs, who is seen witnessing marriages and transacting land with the Duttons. There is no documentation that she is Claiborne and Judith’s daughter, either.
1810 Federal Census, Granville County, North Carolina
- Zachariah Dutton
- 2 free white males aged 10-15
- 2 free white males aged 16-25
- 1 free white male 45 or over
- 1 free while female under 10
- 1 free white female aged 16-25
- 1 free white female 45 or over
Broken down:
2 free white males aged 10-15: Samuel Dutton was born ca. 1797. The other is likely Joseph Parrish, born ca. 1794.
2 free white males aged 16-25: Stephen Dutton (born ca. 1792) and Edmond (born 1793). Gerrard Dutton had left the household and was living on his own.
1 free white female aged 16-25: If Elizabeth was born between 1785 and 1790 as we have supposed above, she would fit this category. The older Parrish daughters have apparently married.
1 free white female under 10: Matilda Dutton, if she were born ca. 1801-1807, would fit this ideally.
1820 Federal Census, Granville County, North Carolina
- Zachariah Dutton
- 2 free while males under 10
- 1 free white male 45 or over
- 2 free white females under 10
- 1 free white female aged 16-25
- 1 free white female 45 or over
- 1 male slave under 14
- 1 female slave under 14
By 1820, all the Dutton sons had left home. Zachariah Dutton Jr. had gone to Brunswick County, North Carolina, and as far as we can tell, was dead by 1820. Alexander Dutton had gone to Alabama and was now dead. Gerrard Dutton was also already in Alabama, and Edmond, if he wasn’t already there, was somewhere along the way. William and John Dutton were living in Anson County, North Carolina, and Samuel, later an Anson County resident, was apparently living in South Carolina in 1820. Stephen Dutton was married on 23 September 1818 and had his own household in Granville County.
Elizabeth Dutton married William Bailey on 27 April 1817. But of more concern: If Matilda Dutton were the oldest daughter, born before 1790 and as early as 1775, who never married, where was she now? Her absence here does not fit.
It is unclear who these younger people might be. Perhaps they were grandchildren, possibly the orphan children of Zachariah Jr.? That might, of course, include Matilda Dutton, if she were Zachariah Jr.’s daughter, and explain how she came back to Granville County to meet Elijah Bass. But she could just as well be the daughter of Zachariah and Judith. The fact is that she was apparently not as old as we thought before.
1 free white female aged 16-25: This is likely Matilda, born between 1795 and 1804, and could be Matilda Dutton Bass if the birthdate of ca. 1807 is inaccurate.
2 free white females under 10: One being Matilda, born after 1810, would stretch the prospects of Judith being her mother.
2 free while males under 10: Unknown.
1830 Federal Census, Granville County, North Carolina
Following Zachariah Dutton’s death in 1829, Matilda Dutton appears on the 1830 census as a householder.
- Matilda Dutton
- 1 free white male under 5
- 1 free white female 10-15
- 2 free white females 20-30
- 1 free white female 60-70
We once assumed, perhaps naturally, that Matilda Dutton must be the oldest member of the household: the white female aged 60 to 70. But this would make her born between 1760 and 1770 — a range that seems more appropriate to Judith Parrish Dutton, Matilda’s mother or stepmother. Instead, Matilda might be one of the two white females aged 20 to 30, a category that would fit Matilda Dutton who married Elijah Bass. It is unclear who the rest of these people would be, or why small children keep appearing in the household.
A DNA Smoking Gun
There may yet be a way for DNA to sort this problem out: If Matilda Dutton Bass were the daughter of Zachariah Dutton Sr., then she would be the daughter of Judith Parrish Dutton, and her descendants should show DNA matches with the Parrish family. Last year, I began to notice (and it alarmed me a little) some matches listing Parrish as a surname in the Bass-Dutton tests I had access to.
That didn’t have to mean what it might mean, did it? The Parrish family had been fairly numerous in Granville County, hadn’t they? The Bass family, too, had been in Granville County for several generations. Was it possible that there was some other connection — one of Elijah Bass’s ancestors being a Parrish, or these Parrish matches possibly having Bass ancestors? The presence of Parrish matches was at best circumstantial.
Today I sat down with the DNA and worked through it — and it’s no longer circumstantial.
I noticed months ago that the Bass descendants seemed to have stronger-than-usual matches with Vicille Hogan and James Hogan, two Dutton DNA testees that double-descended, thus getting a double-dose of Dutton DNA, descending both from both Zachariah Dutton’s sons Edmond Dutton and John Dutton. The fact of their Dutton double-descent could possibly explain the stronger matches. Then I noticed that the matches in common between the Bass descendants and the Hogans didn’t include other Dutton cousins — but they did include Parrishes. John Dutton married Omah Parrish, and their descendants would also have Parrish DNA.
If I could identify DNA segments on the Hogan testees that were definitively Parrish DNA, that contained Parrish matches but no Dutton or Hogan matches — and if I could find intersections on those segments between the Hogans, Parrishes, and Basses — then I could prove that the Basses have Parrish DNA. And that is what I was able to do.
Anthony Di Dio (Matilda Dutton Bass → Peter Bass → Ellaverna Bass Di Dio) matches James Hogan (John Dutton/Omah Parrish → Thomas Dutton → Lavina P. Dutton Hogan → James Fuller Hogan) on 85 cM and Vicille Hogan (John Dutton/Omah Parrish → Thomas Dutton → Lavina P. Dutton Hogan → David Wesley Hogan) on 71 cM. Anthony has 201 matches in common with James, including 8 who list the Parrish surname in their ancestry. On Chromosome 1, Anthony shares a 26 cM segment with James and an overlapping 6.47 cM segment with Howard Bass. Overlapping on the same segment are matches with Teresa White, Jana Marie Ziegler, Melody Hughes, and Alfred Donald Raby, all claiming Parrish ancestry.
- Teresa White descends from Tabitha Parrish (born 1737 in Granville County, North Carolina, died 1799 in Newberry District, South Carolina) who married John Waldrop (1732-1794), claimed to be a daughter of David Parrish and Judith Holland.
- Melody Hughes descends from the same Tabitha Parrish, via a different grandchild of the Waldrops.
- Jana Marie Ziegler and Alfred Donald Raby do not indicate how they descend from the Parrishes.
Anthony has 132 matches in common with Vicille Hogan, 7 who list Parrish ancestry. Anthony shares a 20 cM segment on Chromosome 2 with Vicille Hogan. Overlapping on the same segment are matches with RA Johnson and Donald Hall, both claiming Parrish ancestry.
- RA Johnson descends from Susannah Parrish (born 1764 in Goochland County, Virginia, died 1846 in Garrard County, Kentucky) who married John Adams (1754-1832), a daughter of Moses Parrish (b. 1737), son of Humphrey Parrish Sr. Importantly, this is not a strictly geographic match to the Parrishes in Granville County, but matches other branches of the Parrish family as well.
- Donald Hall’s family tree is not publicly visible.
Anthony has 19 total matches who list Parrish ancestry, and probably many more who don’t list it.
Howard Bass (Matilda Dutton Bass → Elijah Bass Jr. → William Andrew Bass; Matilda Dutton Bass → Samuel Wirt Bass → Martha Jane Bass) matches Vicille Hogan on 65 cM and James Hogan on 58 cM. He has 184 matches in common with James, 6 of whom list Parrish ancestry. On Chromosome 1, he matches James on the same segment Anthony did, sharing it in common with Teresa White and Sharon Hudgens.
- Sharon Hudgens descends from Ursula Parrish (born 1732 in Goochland County, Virginia, died 1801 in Goochland County, Virginia) who married William Overton Rutherford (1714-1802), the daughter of Humphrey Parrish Sr.
Howard has 142 matches in common with Vicille Hogan, 4 of whom list Parrish ancestry. On Chromosome 3, he has a 23 cM match with Vicille, which he shares with Francis D. Anderson (34 cM).
- Francis D. Anderson descends from Elizabeth Parrish (born 1766 in Goochland County, Virginia, died 1835 in Garrard County, Kentucky) who married Archelus Anderson (1766-1835).
Howard has 35 total matches who list Parrish ancestry, and probably many more who don’t list it.
These connections appear to prove that the descendants of Matilda Dutton Bass have Parrish ancestry. This adds to the mounting evidence that Matilda may be the daughter of Zachariah Dutton Sr. and Judith Parrish. It is not, however, absolute proof. It is remotely possible that the Bass family descended from Parrishes, though there is no evidence of this. There are another couple of possibilities.
Other Possibilities
One alternate possibility that occurs to me, that might explain the Bass-Parrish connection, is that Zachariah Dutton Jr. might have married a Parrish, and still been the father of Matilda Dutton. There is no evidence of this, and it seems unlikely. If Zachariah Jr. had married a Parrish girl, or anyone else, in Granville County, there would be a surviving record of it. Since there’s not, he probably married someone in Brunswick County, North Carolina, where he was living by 1807. All early Brunswick County records were lost when the courthouse was burned in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. If he married someone in Brunswick County, odds are she wasn’t a Parrish.
One final possibility that occurs to me with some alarm: John Dutton and Omah Parrish are known to have had an unidentified daughter, born between 1810 and 1820, according to the 1820 census. There was no daughter listed on the 1810 census. This age isn’t quite right to be Matilda Dutton Bass, but she being their daughter would explain the Parrish connection, and John and Omah were married by 1806, early enough to be her parents. But they had left Granville County by 1820, and were in Alabama by the early 1830s. It makes little sense for their daughter not to have gone with them and instead to have remained in Granville County and married someone from there. This would also require assuming that Elijah Bass Jr. was mistaken about the names of both his grandparents (he said they were Zachariah Dutton and Mary Dutton).
Statistically, according to the Shared cM Project, John and Omah being Matilda’s parents is feasible (Anthony Di Dio, Howard Bass, and Vicille Hogan would then be third cousins to each other), and would explain the slightly stronger matches (about 15-20 cM stronger, on average, than to other cousins on the same generational level). But I suspect they should be even higher than they are, given the endogamy (double-descent) on both sides (Howard Bass’s parents were first cousins; Vicille Hogan’s grandparents were second cousins). Inheriting shared DNA from both Dutton and Parrish lines would also explain the stronger matches.
Summary and Conclusion
The descendants of Matilda Dutton Bass have enough matches with other descendants of Zachariah Dutton Sr. of Granville County, North Carolina to make it clear that there is a family connection. The Bass family also hailed from Granville County, North Carolina, and indications are that Matilda was born in Granville County sometime between 1801 and 1809. Matilda’s son Elijah Bass Jr. stated in his Eastern Cherokee application that his grandfather was Zachariah Dutton, and he named a son Zachariah Bass.
It is not immediately clear, though, which Zachariah Dutton was her father. There are two main hypotheses:
- Zachariah Dutton Jr., son of Zachariah Dutton Sr., was her father.
- Zachariah Dutton Sr. was her father, by his second wife Judith Parrish.
In weighing evidence for these two hypotheses, I am forced to conclude that the evidence for Zachariah Sr. being Matilda’s father is stronger. The evidence for Zachariah Jr. being the father is based mostly on unfounded assumptions, some of which contradict the actual evidence:
- Zachariah Dutton Jr. did marry and have children by 1810. He had moved to Brunswick County, North Carolina, by 1807. But instead of a daughter listed on the 1810 census, there is only one son under age 10. Believing Matilda was their daughter requires assuming either that the 1810 census is in error about the gender of their child, or that Matilda Bass was born after 1810 and in later censuses was consistently mistaken about her age.
- Zachariah Dutton Jr. apparently died by 1820. In this theory, Zachariah Jr.’s orphan children would have returned to Granville County to live with their grandparents, where Matilda Dutton met Elijah Bass — which is not unthinkable, but this again requires assuming facts for which there is no evidence.
The evidence for Zachariah Sr. being the father, on the other hand, has positive support:
- Zachariah Dutton Sr. is known to have had a daughter named Matilda, named in his will, who was unmarried in 1830.
- In this theory, Zachariah’s daughter Matilda would have to be younger than we previously assumed, and would have to be the daughter of Judith Parrish Dutton, when before we didn’t think Zachariah and Judith had children together.
- The assumption that Matilda was the oldest child of Zachariah is not supported by evidence, and is based on the assumption that his daughter Elizabeth was a young woman when she married in 1817. Evidence from the census and other records, however, suggests that Elizabeth was older and raises the possibility that Matilda was younger. No older unmarried woman who might be an older Matilda is found in Zachariah’s household in 1810 or 1820.
- This requires assuming that Elijah Bass Jr. was mistaken about his grandmother’s name (he named her Mary Dutton in his Eastern Cherokee application), but this is certainly possible, given that Peter Bass his brother, on his Eastern Cherokee application, didn’t know the names of either of his grandparents.
- DNA testing indicates that the descendants of Matilda Dutton Bass have Parrish ancestry, adding strong support for the possibility that Matilda was the daughter of Judith Parrish Dutton, which she would have been if she were born after 1800.
Given all of this, I must conclude that it’s more likely that Matilda Dutton Bass was Zachariah Dutton’s daughter than that she was his granddaughter, the daughter of Zachariah Dutton Jr. This is by no means definite, and remains speculative, but since we need to connect her to the tree somehow, I plan to change my tree to reflect this developing evidence.
Next Steps
We can continue to hope that records will come to light in Granville County, North Carolina, that might clarify Matilda Dutton Bass’s identity and connection to the other Duttons. But in the meantime, more work can be done with the DNA. In particular, the ability to work with more Bass-Dutton DNA tests would be helpful. If you are a Bass-Dutton descendant, and especially if you have older relatives, conducting DNA tests can be very helpful. See my page on how to participate, and contact me.
