Ira B. Dutton Papers and Photographs
1862-1928
WVM Mss 14
19.2 linear ft. (12 archives boxes and 9 flat boxes) and photographs 0.2 linear ft. (6 folders).
Wisconsin Veterans Museum
(Map)
Papers and photographs of Ira B. Dutton, a Civil War officer and Quarter Master with the 13th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry; the Acting Assistant Quarter Master for the Northern District of Alabama at Decatur, Alabama; a post-war War Department employee involved with Union soldier grave disinterment, reparations for refugees and freedmen, and war claims; and a Roman Catholic missionary at the leper colony on Molokai, Hawaii as Brother Joseph Dutton. The bulk of the collection concerns Dutton's activities as the Acting Assistant Quarter Master for the Northern District of Alabama at Decatur, covering the period June 1864 through September 1865, however it does also include some material from Dutton's service with the 13th Wisconsin. Civil War records include correspondence; orders; quarter master records and reports; freight records, including bills of lading; personnel records, which includes material on soldiers, civilian employees, and scouts; the records of boards convened to determine compensation for the use or damage of property; military railroad and transportation passes; and part of the daily journal of the armed river transport U.S.S. Stone River. Dutton's post-war activities are more briefly documented. Included are correspondence, orders, and records documenting Dutton's work with the War Department overseeing the disinterment of Union soldiers; the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands; and investigating war claims arising out of the Civil War. Dutton's missionary activities are documented by correspondence with G.A.R. comrades in Wisconsin and elsewhere, including Hosea Rood and A.G. Weissert; observations about customs of the native Hawaiian people; a photocopy of a letter from President Warren G. Harding extolling his work with the lepers on Molokai; and an 1884 room and board receipt from the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, when he was beginning his life as a Catholic brother. Also included are a small number of photographs of Dutton at various points in his life, the mission at Molokai, his mother, and the Brother Joseph Dutton School in Beloit, Wisconsin.
English, Hawaiian
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.wvm-mss00014