| Name: | Thomas Dutton |
| Born: | about 1660 probably Cheshire, England |
| Died: | about 1695 William and Mary Parish, Charles County, Maryland |
| Married: | Elizabeth (Hill) Dutton about 1690 in Charles County, Maryland |
| Children: | Elizabeth (Dutton) Penn, Matthew Dutton, Notley Dutton (b. 1694), Edith Dutton |
Overview
Thomas Dutton was the immigrant ancestor and patriarch of the Dutton family in Charles County, Maryland. He came to Charles County in the year 1680, forty-six years after the first settlers of the colony landed in neighboring St. Mary's County. Thomas's birthplace, parentage, and origin, are not documented.
Thomas married Elizabeth Hill sometime before about 1690, and they gave birth to four children that are known or that survived to adulthood. Thomas's death is also not well documented, but he appears to have died shortly after his children were born, around 1695.
This page seeks to present the primary sources that are known about Thomas Dutton's life and address any uncertainty and misconceptions surrounding him.
Birth
We say that Thomas Dutton was born about 1660, but in truth, this is a speculation, little more than a guess. A person who would pack up and journey to the New World, to settle in a new colony on a new continent, would be most likely to be a young man, and about twenty years old is a very rough guess. This isn't at all a certainty. He could have been thirty, forty, or even sixty years old, for all we know.
And so, attempts to identify Thomas Dutton with any birth or baptism record in Cheshire, England, are inherently unfounded. We don't know his precise age or birthdate or even know for certain that he came from Cheshire. So it you find a tree reporting to know Thomas Dutton's parents — it had better have some convincing documentation, more than just the birth or baptism record of a Thomas Dutton born in 1660.