DUTTON, STUART L.

Stuart Luther Dutton, son of William Thompson and Emily Mize Dutton, was born May 20, 1876 in Smith County, near Rural Retreat, Virginia. Stuart was the youngest child of two sets of children. When his father returned from the Civil War, he discovered most of his children had died. Stuart attend-ed schools in Virginia, College in North Carolina, and held a teacher's degree. He worked in Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia, then on to Indiana where he worked on farms. Stuart then travelled on to Madison County, Nebraska where there was a settle-ment of Virginians. While in Madison County, Nebraska, Stuart married Lalla Boyer in 1900. They moved to south Cherry County where Stuart filed for a Homestead. Stuart and Lalla had four children, Robert, Clarence, Myrtle and Lewis. Stuart worked for the 101 Ranch (a big ranch that ran cattle from Oklahoma through the sandhills). Stuart also delivered mail in a spring board buckwagon. He sustained a broken leg in an accident, but continued on and finished his mail route. The mail route became his main source of income. He had hired a man for the farm work on the homestead.

According to Robert Dutton (Stuart and Lalla's oldest son), Stuart bought the livery stable from Alex Kerns, sold his ranch-farm to Charlie Boyer, and left the homestead on May 30, 1911. A court house was being built in Mullen and they needed a Sheriff and Stuart was asked to run for the job. According to Robert, there were only one or two prisoners at a time, for minor offenses. They would be locked up at night in a jail that was built under the new court house, but during the day the prisoners hung around the livery barn where Stuart could keep an eye on them. They had no female prisoners. During the flu epidemic, the prisoners were taken to Stuart's home for lodging until they recov-ered. Robert claims that while Stuart was Sheriff' he had only one “Bad case'', when he arrested a man for murder, took him to Grand Island by train for trial and the man was sent to state prison at Lincoln.

Stuart and Lalla's marriage terminated about this time.

While Stuart was in the livery stable business, he became fascinated with automo-biles. He owned on of the first cars in the Sandhills. His first license plate was 93-4, the same number he had all his life. (That license number passed from Stuart Dutton to his son Neal, and now to his grandson Jay.) I don't know if the low number was because of his being a county official, or because of him having one of the first cars in the county.

In 1913 Stuart Dutton was in the first group to be initiated into the Masonic Lodge, making him a Charter Member.

On May 18, 1917, Stuart married Anna Louise Hibben. Anna was a young lady who had been raised in the vicinity of Fremont, Nebraska and Missouri Valley, Iowa. She had attended school in Chadron, Nebraska, and had taught school in the eastern part of the state. Anna came to Mullen by train to spend the summer with friends. She got off the train, asked Robert Dutton (who was just hanging around the train station) to carry her bags to her friend's house, gave him a nice tip, and Robert introduced Stuart to Anna.

Stuart and Anna had two sons, Neal Jesse and Marvin Earl.

Anna Dutton was a Charter Member of Winifred Chapter #292, Order of the Eastern Star.

In 1922 Stuart started in the grocery business. That business extended credit to many of the early settlers of the Sandhills. The old store served as a meeting place, especially on Saturdays, of the community associated with Mullen. Stuart saw the fencing of the Sandhills, as attempt to farm the land, the dust bowl and the buying out of the small farmer by the big rancher.

Stuart passed away in 1958 and Anna passed away in 1975.