The Dutton Family
The 1851 Census records nine of the name Dutton living in Aldershot.
James Dutton’s father, was also called James. Aged 72, he was a widower, said to be living on an annuity. He now stayed in the household of James’ sister Sarah and his brother-in-law James Paine, in a cottage which James Dutton had owned in Drury Lane since 1838.
Baptised in Haslemere in 1780, James Dutton (Senior) had married Elizabeth Hammond in Farnham in 1803, at St Andrew’s Church.
He bought a cottage and 4 rods of ground for £102 in 1838 from the potter Richard Chitty. His purchase is shown as Plot 7 in the map extract from the 1841 Tithe Apportionment Survey.
The Rate Book for 1839 shows that this was occupied by his son John. He was his third son, baptised in Farnham in 1811. John had married Mary Fludder at St Michael’s Church in Aldershot in 1837.
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- She was the sister of Ellen Fludder who had married Robert Mason, the potter.
His first son, also called James, had become a labourer on the Aldershot Lodge estate, staying as an unmarried farm labourer in the household of James Elstone Senior in 1841 and in the household of James Elstone in 1851. His loyal service recognised as “the longest as a single man” with the award of £1 – 10s at the North East Hants Agricultural Association in November 1853.
The second son, David, died in childhood in 1819.
James Dutton (Senior) had shared a cottage up at Bakers in 1841 with his younger son Edward, both working as labourers. Edward now lived in the household of James’ third son, John.
John Dutton was also a farm labourer, living on one of Elstone’s cottages nearby on Church Hill with his family. He was one of several who benefited from the will of the yeoman farmer Benjamin May in 1841, bequeathed the copyhold of close of 1½ acre of arable land called Two Oaks which was being worked by the farmer Thomas Harding.
Two Oaks was on Church Lane, shown as Plot 292 in the map extract from the 1841 Tithe Apportionment Survey.
Plot 136 also went by the name Two Oaks and the adjacent Plot 135, opposite Plot 292, would later be known as Two Oaks. The suggestion is that, in times past, this was once a heavily wooded area, much like Plot 270 (Great Coppice), through which ran a path that was eventually made into the more substantial Church Lane.
John Dutton sold Plot 292 to Messrs Bridges and Wayte in 1844. (Matthew Bridges was then the occupant of the Manor House estate.) It was subsequently sold, in April 1847, by a John Bridges and SS Wayte to Charles Giradot and others. (Charles Giradot was brother-in-law to George Newcome, respectively the owner and occupant of the Manor House estate.)
John and Mary Dutton had six children, five boys and a daughter who did not reach her first birthday.
The family included John Dutton (Junior) who would later emigrate and write about his life:
“I was born in the pleasant town of Aldershot in the year 1846. My father, who was a farmer, died in 1858. The first part of my life was spent in school and herding great flocks of sheep. I had six brothers, but no sisters. … at the age of fourteen I enlisted as a drummer in the 47th regiment.”
=> Story of John Dutton, born Aldershot, 1843
There is a note to his story at the link above which states that “John Dutton’s memory of past events had probably dimmed or faded over the intervening years.”
John Dutton (Junior) was in fact born in Aldershot in 1843, baptised at St Michael’s Church in September of that year. His father was buried there in May 1859 aged 48, when John was still 14 years old. He was one of five brothers, his younger sister not reaching her first birthday.