DUTTON, STUART LUTHER

S. L. Dutton was born May 20, 1876 near Rural Retreat, Virginia. His father was William Tompson Dutton who served four years in the Civil War fighting for the rights of the state of Virginia. When he returned home, defeated and discouraged, he found his good wife Emily had kept up their fruit farm but their three children had died of whooping cough and diphtheria. They had three more children: Louvinia, Wiley and Stewart. Lou-vinia married John Vaught. Wiley was teach-ing school at Cedar Springs, Va. when Stuart graduated with a teachers credential. When school was out, Wiley and Stuart went to Chicago to try to find work for the summer. Nothing was available there so they went to Madison County, Nebraska with some friends.

Clarence Dutton (Wiley's son) has a letter from Wiley written to his sister “Louie'' telling about Stuart finding work doing house painting in Battle Creek, Nebraska but Wiley, not finding any work, returned to Virginia to teach at his old school for $45 per month. Stuart continued living in Nebraska and was dating Gertrude Wright. They had a misunderstanding and broke up. Then he started dating Lalla Boyer who was eight years younger than Stuart.

Lalla's father, Robert Boyer, filed on a homestead in Cherry County, NB and was going to move his family to the Sandhills as soon as he could get a sod house built. When they got ready to move, he insisted that Lalla quit school and go with them. She was 17 and the only girl left at home to help take care of her 4 brothers and a baby stepsister. Her mother had died when she was 12 years old, leaving 7 children, five boys and two girls. The oldest boy, Kyle, and girl, Myrtle, left home when they were 15. Lalla and Stuart decided to get married March 1900 so she would not have to go to the Sandhills. Within 3 months, she was pregnant and probably homesick for her family. They decided Stuart would go to Cherry County and file on a homestead. There was one just east of her father, Robert Boyer's place 14 miles north of Mullen. Lalla's Aunt Mollie and Uncle Tom Carr had filed on one adjoining Robert's place on the west. Their family would be moving up there the following autumn and Lalla could come west with them. The Carrs left Madison County the last day of Septem-ber and arrived at Lalla's Aunt Rene and Uncle Charley Long's place in Cherry County late at night, October 9th. It took them 10 days with covered wagons with a plow tied on one side, cream cans of water on the other, chicken crates on the back of one of the wagons and a cow being led by the other. Lalla and Troy Carr brought up the rear in a covered spring wagon.

Robert Boyer and Tom Carr built sod houses on their land until they could get started. I think Stuart had inherited some money as he had a two-room frame house, a barn and a well house that a trough of water ran through. Lalla kept crocks of milk, cream, and butter in that running water. In the well house, slabs of bacon and ham hung from the ceiling. Later they put a cream separator in there. He also had a water well put down and a windmill. There was a large tank that water flowed into so the stock could drink. In the winter time, it would freeze over with ice, and they would chop a big section of the ice each morning so the cattle and horses could get water. It was that tank that their son, Clarence fell into when he was 3 years old. No one knows how long he laid in the bottom of that tank of ice water. Charlie Isom, our hired man, was washing up for lunch when he asked where Clarence was. Mother Lalla told him that she thought he was outside with him. Charlie dropped the comb, put on his coat and went to the tank. He didn't see him around there so he started to the barn and calf pen. He said something made him go back to the tank and push the ice over in the hole he had chopped out for the horses to drink and found Clarence lying in the bottom of the tank. He worked on him sometime before he got him breathing again.

Lalla worked hard on that homestead. In 10 years, there were 3 children; Robert, Clarence and Myrtle, all born in the sod house at Grandpa Robert Boyer's. There was no doctor, just Grandma Alverda Boyer as midwife. Lalla washed on the board with 2 tubs of water sitting on a bench and a wash boiler on the stove. She made soap out of grease and lye and carried all the water until Robert was old enough to help her. She made bread 3 times a week, cooked 3 meals a day on a stove that burned corn cobs and cow chips and sometimes coal. She helped with the milking and separated the cream, then washing up the separator. She took care of the turkeys and chickens, setting the hens, feeding them and gathering the eggs. In the spring, she would plant a big garden and always took a hoe with her to the garden to kill any rattle snakes that were near. I remember one time, Robert, Clarence and I were walking up the road with our dog, “Jip''. Jip quickly jumped in front of us and pushed us back. He grabbed a rattlesnake by its belly and shook it from side to side with his head until it was dead. Robert helped Mother a lot. At the time Papa Stuart sold our place, Mother and Robert were milking 14 cows besides the other work. We moved to town and July 10, 1913, Lewis Harrison was born. By this time, Mother's and Papa's interests were so far apart, that neither one was happy, they were divorced in spring, 1915. All 4 of us chose to stay with Mother. She stayed several months in Mullen then took her family to Crawford, NB. She did housework there and got a job in a cafe and took care of her family.