The Dunton family has had defacto historians for generations.  This website is an attempt to maintain past research and further the continued efforts for future generations so that our family heritage might be preserved.

When I first showed an interest in our genealogy, I was flooded with information from other family members researching their individual branches. Most of this was well documented and provided me with my complete and well documented Dunton genealogy back to Samuel Dunton of Reading, Massachusetts in about 1630. He turns out to be the proverbial "brick wall" that past pedigree researchers had run into.

It seems that there is a lack of strong documentation with regards to Duntons coming to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  There is documentation showing that they were here in the early 1600s -- town records, land titles, marriage records, etc. -- just nothing showing their name on a ship's logs.

Since I actively started the computerized era of this family project back in the mid 1980s, I have found some interesting leads and have learned of theories regarding our pre-American origin.  When I first started using the Internet in 1995, I discovered a site that linked the Dutton and Dunton surnames.  It hypothesized that the father of Samuel Dunton as a man by the name of John Dutton.

It is presumed that John Dutton of England came to America with the Winthrop Fleet, along with his family, in about 1630.  According to "Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts", Vol. I, by William Richard Cutter, he had at least four sons - Samuel, Thomas, Josiah, and Robert.  Samuel, and possibly Robert, started the tradition of the family name being spelled as "Dunton".  I am presently searching for any and all information on John Dutton of 1630 and his link to my Grandfather Samuel Dunton.  As of this writing, this is undocumented and a theory based on circumstance and speculation.

We are collecting documented genealogies, GEDCOM files, FTM files, and of course, any documentation scans, relating to the Dutton / Dunton / Dunten families.  This information is then compiled into one large database and document archive created.  Several family members have submitted copies of their documentation.  In time, we hope to get it all catalogued and made available.

When a person submits data to the this project, it is maintained off-line so that the privacy of living individuals is maintained.  Since we are not staffed and have very limited time and monetary resources, requests for searches are completed as possible.  The main, linked, off-line family database is in Family Tree Maker format.  We encourage you to send me updates (please include documentation). This project will only be as successful as the participants make it.