On June 23, 2023, Stephen Skelly was cleaning out the basement of the St. Jude Parish rectory in Beloit, Wisconsin. It was a favor for his daughter, a church employee, and for the retiring pastor, Father John Hedrick. A new group of priests had arrived, and Father Hedrick didn't want to leave the task of cleaning out decades of bric-a-brac to them.
An aficionado of history and retired from his job as a public transit official, Skelly wasn't daunted. If anything, he was excited: This was an opportunity to continue his search for a historical archive he believed might be somewhere in that basement. It had been collected by "Brother" Joseph Dutton, who had been raised in the nearby city of Janesville and died in Honolulu in 1931.
A veteran of the Union army during the Civil War, Dutton converted to Catholicism at 40 and changed his name from Ira to Joseph. He'd had a checkered past—a failed marriage and a decade of alcoholism. Seeking redemption, Dutton spent nearly two years at a monastery in Kentucky, then attended a religious conference in New Orleans. There he read an article about Father Damien De Veuster, the priest ministering to victims of Hansen's disease—also known as leprosy—on Molokai's Kalaupapa Peninsula. Moved by his example, Dutton sought out Charles Warren Stoddard, chair of Notre Dame's English department, who had been to Kalaupapa and told Dutton that his help would surely be welcomed.
Dutton left for the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1886, and for the last forty-four years of his life, he called Kalaupapa home, helping Father Damien serve the patients who had been exiled there. The men formed an enduring bond; Father Damien came to call Dutton "brother," but it wasn't a monastic title. It was a term of affection and respect, reflecting Father Damien's appreciation that Dutton had volunteered to devote his life to helping the afflicted—and also to risk it. Hansen's was both incurable and contagious; Father Damien himself died of it in 1889. He was posthumously canonized in 2009, the first saint from Hawaii.
Dutton's archive, if it existed, would be a valuable window into this poignant story. Skelly had a hunch that it did exist, and had been determined to find it since 2008. "I asked my daughter, director of religious education at St. Jude Church, then also home to Brother Dutton School, if there were any files at the now-closed school," Skelly says. "She never saw any, but I kept bugging her about it for the next fourteen years."
Father Hedrick and Skelly went at it all morning, cleaning out a room originally built to store coal. It was fire- and waterproof—ideal for storing irreplaceable items—so Skelly got his hopes up. He found a tease: a couple of trifold poster boards with pictures of Dutton and photocopies of his letters. "Like the ones kids use to do their school projects. I was excited but I was also let down," Skelly says. "Is this all there was after fourteen years of searching?" Then he spotted two banker's boxes in a corner. "One was inscribed 'Brother Dutton Scrapbooks—Keep' and the other, 'Priceless, Brother Dutton's papers, Do Not Destroy, 1/03/1982.' My heart started pounding, and I had tears in my eyes. I finally found what had been lost."
Stephen Skelly with the personal archives of Joseph Dutton, who devoted much of his life to helping Hansen's disease patients exiled to Kalaupapa, Molokai. Skelly discovered the lost archive in 2023 in Beloit, Wisconsin, near where Dutton had lived. Among its contents is a 1921 photo of Dutton outside his cottage in Kalaupapa, seen at top.
"The scenery one beholds from any part of that small peninsula is among the most beautiful in the Hawaiian Islands," wrote Dutton of Kalaupapa in his 1931 autobiography, "and today, many of the inter-island steamers pass by it so tourists may view its wonders."
Dutton showed up unannounced in Kalaupapa in July 1886, having arrived by boat. "The day of his arrival, Br. Dutton took luncheon with me, and I scanned him carefully. He had come afoot from Kaunakakai," wrote Kalaupapa's physician at the time, Arthur A. Mouritz. "He wore a blue denim suit. He was reserved and thoughtful, had nothing to say about his past life nor the reason for seeking his seclusion and work on Molokai, and turning his back on the world forever."
Dutton could not have come at a better time, as Father Damien had himself contracted Hansen's less than two years prior. One of Dutton's first duties was caring for the patients, which the ailing priest was struggling to do. Many needed daily attention because they had "terrible sores on their hands, the face and other parts of the body, which had to be dressed," Dutton wrote. Decades later, Hansen's patient Ambrose Kanewalii Hutchison wrote of Dutton's first weeks, "After standing aloof for some days, the urge to follow the example of Father Damien was irresistible. Mr. Dutton went to work with a will, and in a couple of weeks time became an adept washer and dresser of sores, which relieved Father Damien of the work."
Dutton soon came to assume more responsibility, from construction to landscaping to fundraising. In an 1886 letter written shortly after Dutton's arrival, Father Damien praised Dutton's organizational skills and willingness to work, no matter what was asked of him. "Ira B. Dutton is truly an exemplary, self-devoting man," Father Damien wrote to Walter M. Gibson, president of the Hawaiian Kingdom's Board of Health. "He would be at once my secretary—and cashier—the Bishop not wanting me to handle any money, etc.," wrote Father Damien in another letter. "He is a true brother to me." In the 1973 biography Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, historian Gavan Daws describes Dutton as a "totally devoted laborer, extraordinarily industrious, and always calm: preternaturally so. No one ever heard him raise his voice or saw him lose his temper. He did all he could, and asked for nothing in return."
A painting of Dutton found in the recently discovered archive.
Even though Father Damien knew he would become incapacitated, he kept starting houses to shelter new patients. Often he moved from one project to the next without finishing. "'Off I am, Brother Joseph,' he said to me daily, almost hourly, and this was often coupled with the request that I finish what he was doing," recounts Dutton in his autobiography. "'Brother Joseph, you are going to finish these'—referring to the previous jobs, and would laughingly add, 'I am the carpenter; Brother Joseph, the joiner.'"
While Dutton had come to Kalaupapa voluntarily, most of its residents had not. In 1865, King Kamehameha V signed the Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy, a drastic measure that set Kalaupapa aside for quarantine and separated Hansen's victims (and suspected victims) from their families—often forcibly—exiling them to Kalaupapa for the rest of their lives. The law remained in effect until 1969; in 1982 a cure for Hansen's disease was developed, after which some patients returned to society. As of May 2024 eight residents still live there, four of them full time. Today, Kalaupapa is a National Historical Park.
In 1888, less than two years after Dutton's arrival, kingdom officials began more strictly enforcing the isolation laws. The afflicted were no longer given the benefit of the doubt as to whether they had Hansen's or another disease with similar symptoms. By 1901, Kalaupapa's population grew to more than 1,100 patients, many of them children. To house them, Mother Marianne Cope (who was sainted in 2005) and her Sisters of St. Francis opened the Charles R. Bishop Home for Unprotected Leper Girls and Women. Dutton and a group of brothers from Father Damien's religious order, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, built the Henry P. Baldwin Home for Boys and Helpless Men.
The archive includes numerous, never-before-seen photographs documenting Dutton's forty-four years at Kalaupapa. The Civil War veteran arrived unannounced in 1886, just in time to help an ailing Father Damien de Veuster, who had himself contracted Hansen's disease, minister to patients who'd been exiled to the remote peninsula.
These efforts weren't cheap. Dutton wrote letters to secure financing, and Maui-based financier-philanthropist Henry P. Baldwin responded, underwriting the $6,000 construction cost of the Baldwin Home. Its first residents, then only boys under 18, took up residence in 1894. But it soon became clear that disabled older men also required more housing. Dutton took over operations of the Baldwin Home campus in 1895, landscaping the campus with flowers, shrubs and trees. He planted lawns for sports and built stone walls.
In the 1980s, historian Anwei Skinsnes Law interviewed John Cambra, one among the last generation of patients to live at the Baldwin Home. Dutton was an old man when Cambra arrived in 1920, but still active. An avid baseball player, Cambra and his fellow newcomers formed their own team. After defeating the peninsula's reigning champions, they asked Dutton for uniforms. "He said, 'Make a list,'" Cambra recalled. "Next Friday a big box came with all the uniforms, bats, balls and everything."
Dutton never wanted to leave Baldwin Home, but had to go to Honolulu in 1930 for cataract surgery, from which he would never recover. He died on March 26, 1931, a month before what would have been his 88th birthday. He never contracted Hansen's, and his body was returned to Kalaupapa to be buried alongside St. Damien's. Dutton, who'd never accepted compensation for his work, donated his military pension to a monastery. "It has been a happy place," he had said before his death. "A happy life."
Dutton's legacy lives on in Janesville, Wisconsin, where he lived much of his early life. Above, the eponymous elementary school on the grounds of St. Jude's, where the archive was discovered in the basement of the church's rectory. The archive has become a crucial source of information in the ongoing effort to canonize Dutton as the first layperson from Hawaii to be sainted.
Stephen Skelly and his cousin Peter Skelly still reside in Dutton's hometown of Janesville, a picturesque city on Wisconsin's Rock River. Its downtown riverfront buildings remain mostly unchanged from the time Dutton lived there, including the location of the bookstore where Dutton worked before the Civil War. Away from downtown is the home of General Thomas H. Ruger, who also fought in the Civil War—Oahu's Fort Ruger is named for him. Another, more contemporary Hawaii connection: 808 Cheesecake (featuring lilikoi) and 808 Hawaiian Style Poke are both within walking distance of where Dutton lived and worked.
The boxes Skelly discovered indeed proved a treasure trove, with Dutton's letters and photographs going as far back as the Civil War. He may have exiled himself for what he considered his personal failures, but the letters demonstrate that he wasn't estranged from friends and family. Much of his correspondence was with those who had provided encouragement and financial support for Father Damien's work. Among these is a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1908 had the US Navy's Great White Fleet sail past Kalaupapa in honor of Dutton. Touchingly, there are greeting cards with personal messages from Mother Cope; one includes a square of cloth cut from a sling Father Damien had used to support his arm after losing use of it from Hasen's.
Father Bart Timmerman, who replaced Father Hedrick at St. Jude, has entrusted the archive to the Skellys—an important responsibility now that the Roman Catholic Church is considering Dutton for sainthood. "These are Dutton's personal scrapbooks," says Skelly. "With the current investigation into the cause for sainthood, it's important that it remains accessible." Once the archive was scanned, the Skellys sent a thumb drive to Patrick Boland, a Honolulu-based historian active with the Joseph Dutton Guild, an organization advocating for Dutton to become the next saint from Hawaii—St. Joseph—and also the first layperson in Hawaii to be canonized.
Among those supporting Dutton's cause is the Most Reverend Larry Silva, bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu. For Silva, Dutton's life as a layperson who volunteered is a powerful example. "As more information is discovered about the life of Joseph Dutton, more evidence emerges of his holiness and heroic virtue," Silva says. "As we pray he will someday soon be numbered among the Blessed and the Saints of the Church, these discoveries can only help to turn people to greater admiration and imitation of this remarkable man. He served Christ by serving the most desolate outcasts, and his inspiration is needed now—and in every age."
