Dutton, Joseph Brother
DUTTON, JOSEPH BROTHER
Soldier, lay missionary; b. Stowe, Vt., April 27, 1843; d. Honolulu, Hawaii, March 26, 1931. He served as a lieutenant in the Union Army in the Civil War and worked for the War Department for some time afterward. His wife was faithless during their year of marriage and finally deserted him. For a time Dutton was inconsolable and sank into habitual dissipation. Subsequently he became a Catholic (1883) and, after spending two years as an oblate at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, he learned in 1886 of the work of Father Joseph damien in the leper settlement of Kalaupapa, Molokai Island, Hawaii. Deciding to do penance by helping with this work, he offered his services to the vicar apostolic of Hawaii and was accepted. From that time until his final illness in 1930, he never left the settlement. He worked closely with Damien up to Damien's death in 1888, and independently thereafter, nursing the lepers, improving their living conditions, and directing the Baldwin Home for leper boys. Dutton was honored by the U.S. Navy when the Atlantic Fleet in 1908 and the U.S. Battle Fleet in 1925 sailed in review before Kalawao in tribute to him. He bequeathed all his possessions to the Kalaupapa lepers.
Bibliography: c. j. dutton, The Samaritans of Molokai (New York 1932). j. farrow, Damien the Leper (New York 1937).
[r. e. carson]