Chester County PA Archives History.....Isaac DUTTON, Letter, 1851 Contributed to the USGenWeb Archives by Edmund A. Bator [eamzmbator@comcast.net] Copyright. All Rights Reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm ********************************************************* Image of Letter by Isaac Dutton to Edgar Wells Charles, 1851: http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/chester/history/duttonltr1851.jpg The letter writer, Isaac Dutton, of Madison County, Ohio (?), is, I believe, the son of Jeremiah DUTTON and Sarah CORNOG. This DUTTON/CORNOG marriage took place on 2/13/1809 [source: “Pa, Vital Records on CD Rom,” kindly provided courtesy of Lida Merz, Berwyn, Pa, in an e-mail dated 10/15/1999]. Sarah CORNOG, according to Dutton, in a separate note, which I haven’t attached, is a “niece to Andrew CHARLES.” This means that Sarah Cornog’s mother was a CHARLES [first name unverified] and, like Andrew, a child of the original CHARLES settler [first name unverified] found in Chester County, PA, around 1755. The date of his daughter’s marriage to a CORNOG also remains unknown. But Isaac Dutton refers to this lady as “my mother’s mother [who] lies in the Friends Burying Ground in Delaware County. She died in 1793.” Thus far I have failed to find a cemetery record for her - which, I had hoped, would establish her first name and verify DOB & DOD. Dutton’s addressee in his letter of 1851 is Edgar Wells CHARLES [1801-1876] of Darlington, SC, the son of Andrew CHARLES [1765-1812]. The obit for Andrew who died in Charleston, SC, in 1812, states that he was 47 years old and came from Pennsylvania. I have no idea how E.W. Charles and Isaac Dutton made contact, but Dutton is obviously replying to queries from Edgar Wells Charles [to persons unknown] re his ancestry. How these queries came to Dutton’s attention is a mystery, although, as deduced from his words, his grandmother was a CHARLES. In his letter Dutton refers to a third child of the original CHARLES settler as Thomas CHARLES, a brother of Andrew,“ who died very young.” A fourth CHARLES child is identified by Dutton as “Rachael [sic] ROW [who] died in Lancaster County in 1808.” My own research reveals that Rachel CHARLES married John ROW on July 11, 1793 [source: Pennsylvania Archives, selected and arranged from original sources in the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, by Samuel Hazard, commencing from 1748, Vol.IX – “Marriage Record of St. James Episcopal Church, Pekiomen, Montgomery County 1788-1810,” p.172] Regrettably, nothing, in the copious amount of material that I have gathered, refers to the origins of the CHARLES progenitor except for the Dutton letter. It annoys me to be unable to identify the original settler by his first name, DOB, DOD or to verify how and why he came to PA. Nor do I know who the original CHARLES married. But I do know, through Dutton, that she died in 1799 and that both husband and wife “remains lie in the Presbyterian burying grounds one mile & a half west of Paoli.” My exhaustive research, including three days in Paoli and Chester County eleven years ago, turned up zilch regarding these burying grounds. Nor have I found the CHARLES name among Chester County documents such as land grants, wills, court records, tax records in PA, or among birth, marriage and death records - except for the ones mentioned above. The PA census of 1790 lists 15 CHARLES heads of households but none in Chester County. All I know is that, according to Dutton, CHARLES “settled in Paoli in Willistown Township Chester County on property belonging to the Loyds [sic]” and that he “came from Canada about the close of Braddock’s career …” This bit of news turned me into a quasi authority on Acadian exiles [French neutrals] who were sent to PA from Nova Scotia and farmed out to “Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester and Lancaster …” by the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania following an Act passed on 3/5/1756 [source: Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, Vol. VII, p.45. Also, Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Vol. VI, p.297]. But I’ve not been able to find a list those Acadians who were sent to Chester County, if any. Such a list, if one exists, would at least confirm or deny the existence of CHARLES as a French Acadian. If not an Acadian, I have no idea to what Dutton is referring by his comments re Canada and Braddock. Nor have I discounted the possibility that he might be a French Huguenot, unlike the vast majority of Acadian exiles who were Roman Catholic. There is also the possibility that he could be either English or Welsh. The CHARLES surname is listed in The Dictionary of American Family Names as being either French, English of Welsh. If the progenitor is English or Welsh, this raises questions about Dutton’s thesis re his Canada/Braddock comment. My research continues but, until turns up some other data on CHARLES in Chester County, I remained stymied. As for living on “property belonging to the Loyds,” my research confirms that Lloyds were Welsh Quakers. Therefore, they could have been offering charity & benevolence to a French Neutral as requested by the Provincial Council. This would explain why CHARLES was living on their property. This file is located at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/chester/history/family/duttonltr1851.txt