I am pleased to announce that my Dutton book, entitled Stories from the Old House: William Dutton (c.1777-c.1855) of Morgan County, Alabama, and His Descendants, is now available for pre-sale. It features an introduction to the family of Zachariah Dutton, his ancestors in Cheshire, England, and Charles County, Maryland, and then goes on to focus on the family of my ancestor William Dutton, Zachariah’s son. It includes highlights of a number of other North Alabama families, including Hogan, Sparks, Pell, Otwell, McDonald, Staples, Wilhite, Johnson, Minor and Wright. The pre-order price if $59.95. I hope to have the book in your hands by Christmas. At a later date, I will also release the book as an e-book. Order yours today! https://www.zdutton.org/book.
Our progenitor Zachariah Dutton (Ancestry Tree) first appears in records in Charles County, Maryland, in 1778. There had been a Dutton family living in Charles County since 1680, the descendants of Thomas Dutton and Elizabeth Hill, and we have always believed that Zachariah Dutton is connected to them somehow.
There has been a lot of speculation about Zachariah’s ancestral connections, some of which has become quite pervasive in public family trees on Ancestry.com. On Ancestry, it appears that if many people list something, it tends to be accepted as true — but often, misinformation is repeated by almost everybody as fact simply because it is repeated by almost everybody. In the case of Zachariah Dutton, we have documentation that disproves the apparent common consensus — that Zachariah was the son of Gerrard Dutton of Charles County, Maryland — and DNA that indicates he is not a patrilineal descendant of these Duttons at all.
In this article, I would like to do my best to clear up some of this confusion, first by summarizing what we know of Zachariah Dutton, then by examining the possible points where Zachariah could connect to the family of Thomas Dutton of Charles County, and finally by examining the DNA evidence.
Elizabeth Bass Murphy, daughter of Matilda Dutton Bass.
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?
The list of Zachariah Dutton’s children that I’ve been posting and passing around — including their birth dates and birth order — has been pretty standard for the past twenty years. It’s based, mostly unchanged, on a speculation sheet Darlene Cole published in a 1986 query on the family in Alabama Family History and Genealogy News (the quarterly of the North Central Alabama Genealogical Society out of Cullman, Alabama). This was my first introduction to the family of Zachariah Dutton, so it’s almost with a degree of deference and veneration that I’ve kept it intact. It represents a very good piece of research, making sense of what till then for me had been an undefined and confusing set of names:
Matilda, born ca. 1774
William, born ca. 1776-77
John, born ca. 1778
Zachariah, born ca. 1781
Alexander, born ca. 1784
Jarrett, born ca. 1789-90
Stephen, born ca. 1791
Edmund, born 1793
Elizabeth, born ca. 1796
Samuel, born ca. 1797
Can we assume that these dates are correct, however? Several of the dates, notably for Zachariah Jr., Alexander, Gerrard (Jarrett), and Elizabeth, are at best guesses. Speculation is fine and the ground of research progress, but I am concerned as I move forward not to propagate data as fact without a firm basis. So what can we really say, from the primary sources, about the birth dates and order of Zachariah Dutton’s children? Is there a need to reexamine and revise this venerable list?
Cousins, there’s been a breakthrough in DNA research toward identifying Zachariah Dutton’s paternal ancestry. Y-DNA research has uncovered evidence that Zachariah’s father may have been an O’Caine, of the same family as Judith O’Caine who married Matthew Dutton of Charles County, Maryland. This is still a speculation and not proof, but it is a significant advance over what we knew before. Here is an account of how we’ve come to this conclusion. Let me begin by giving a brief overview of the science involved in this discovery, and then the background of the research leading up to it. Finally, I will relate the recent developments that brought us to this discovery.
I’m writing this update as an overview of the state of research into Zachariah Dutton, his ancestors, and his descendants. As you may know, I’ve been in school for a long, long time. I finished two degrees in history, and then faced with a poor job market, decided to do another degree in computer science. School has been dominating my attention for the past several years, so I’m sad to say, I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of you and let my Dutton research fall by the wayside. Speaking for myself, the State of the Dutton has been kind of meager.
Generally the first questions anybody asks about Zachariah Dutton are, who is he? Where does he come from? Who does he connect to? What we know is limited and fragmentary, but with the extant sources, we can construct a fair picture of Zachariah’s life.
Charles County, Maryland
We believe he was born in Charles County, Maryland. There had been a Dutton family living in Charles County since 1680, the descendants of Thomas Dutton and Elizabeth Hill, that we have presumed from the start Zachariah was connected to. Based on the 1800 census on Granville County, North Carolina, in which Zachariah states he is 45 years of age or older, we believe he was born before 1755. Because he died in 1829, and began having children ca. 1775-77, we believe he was born not long before 1750. An earlier date is possible, but ca. 1750-55 seems reasonable. We have very little idea who Zachariah’s first wife, our ancestor, was.
Zachariah Dutton on the 1790 U.S. Census, Charles County, Maryland, page 17. He listed as 1 white male over 16, 5 white males under 6, 2 white females over 16, and 3 slaves.
Zachariah appears on a 1778 census and a 1783 tax assessment of Charles County, Maryland, living in the East Newport Hundred, apart from the rest of the Duttons, who were living in the Upper William and Mary Hundred. His name appears on a roster of the Maryland Militia during the Revolution, serving in Captain John Parnham’s Company of Militia, 12th Battalion, out of Charles County. He appears on the first census of the United States in 1790 in Charles County, at that time apparently having five sons, a wife, and a daughter.
Granville County, North Carolina
Will of Zachariah Dutton
We believe Zachariah moved to North Carolina probably around 1795. His son Edmond was born in 1793 in Maryland; his son Samuel was born ca. 1797 in North Carolina. Zachariah’s first wife probably died shortly after Samuel’s birth in ca. 1797, if not in childbirth. On 23 November 1798 in Granville County, North Carolina, he married Judith Parrish, the widow of Claiborne Parrish. Zachariah had no children by this union.
He appears on the 1800, 1810, and 1820 censuses in Granville County. His will was signed 10 November 1828 and proven in court in August 1829. We presume that he died in 1829.
Zachariah’s Ancestry
From the beginning of our research, Zachariah Dutton’s ancestry has been enigmatic. As far as anyone has found, he appears in no court records in Charles County, Maryland, neither witnessing or named in any will by any Dutton or anyone else. This is in contrast to the family of Thomas Dutton of Charles County, Maryland, and his son Matthew Dutton, who appear to have been landed and well-to-do and who appear in will records. Why are we insistent, then, that Zachariah is connected to these people? The one firm thread that has held Zachariah to this family, in my mind, has been his naming of a son Gerrard: Matthew Dutton’s father-in-law was Gerrard O’Caine.
When we began our DNA research, we were at first disheartened to learn that Zachariah Dutton does not match the patrilineal line of Thomas Dutton: it appears that his father was not a Dutton. This was not, however, a huge surprise. His lack of presence in the records and apparent disconnection from the other Dutton families already suggested the possibility that he was illegitimate.
Autosomal DNA research, however, has uncovered matches between Zachariah Dutton descendants and confirmed descendants of Thomas Dutton in Charles County, Maryland. So it appears that Zachariah Dutton is connected to this family after all. I believe his mother was likely a Dutton, possibly a daughter of Matthew Dutton. (Matthew’s will names only sons.)
In other posts, I will discuss at greater length the family of Thomas Dutton of Charles County, Maryland, where Zachariah Dutton might fit in, and possibilities for who his father might have been, as the DNA reveals.
Cousins, there’s been a breakthrough in DNA research toward identifying Zachariah Dutton’s paternal ancestry. Y-DNA research has uncovered evidence that Zachariah’s father may have been an O’Caine, of the same family as Judith O’Caine who married Matthew Dutton of Charles County, Maryland. This is still a speculation and not proof, but it is a significant advance over what we knew before. Here is an account of how we’ve come to this conclusion. Let me begin by giving a brief overview of the science involved in this discovery, and then the background of the research leading up to it. Finally, I will relate the recent developments that brought us to this discovery.
