DUTTON, STUART LUTHER

by Myrtle Dutton Hood

Entry F117 from the History of Hooker County Nebraska
with permission of the Hooker County Historical Society

Stuart L Dutton and Lalla F. Boyer married March 4, 1900.

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.