Some seven years ago I put forth a speculation that Zachariah Dutton's wife was a Penn, the sister of Stephen Penn. Then, I was young, brash, and ambitious. I was desperate to establish my family as "well-connected," and myself as a capable researcher. And I was wrong.
Let me now be clear: There is absolutely no direct evidence to support the identification of Zachariah Dutton's wife as a Penn. While there is significant evidence to suggest some connection between the families of Zachariah Dutton and Stephen Penn, the former conclusion was hasty, flawed, and unsupportable. It is too late to take back my statements, but it is my hope that by this article I will be able to set the record straight.
I took my first steps as a genealogist in the spring of 1996. I was sixteen years old. Almost immediately I settled upon my Dutton family as the primary focus of my research, for several reasons. First, I have always been close to my Dutton relatives. Second, I still live in the area in which my Duttons first settled, and the records they left behind were in close proximity, and promised to be very researchable. Third, they seemed to be a family that no one else in my family had tried to research. They were uncharted territory, and beckoned to be explored.
The Dutton family did not begin to come together for me until I began to research at the Morgan County Archives, when I discovered the will of Zachariah Dutton, which had been submitted to the Alabama Family History and Genealogy News in 1986 by Darlene Cole, and placed in the Dutton family file by my cousin Julie Dutton. That summer I took a volunteer job at the Archives, and immersed myself in the family lore of Morgan County.
While I was working at the Archives, I came to admire the great body of work of the late Elbert J. Minter, whose files had recently been donated to the Archives. His research showed a vast network of interconnection between the Day, Penn, and Gibson families, as well as many others. Growing up in Morgan County and having relatives in Danville, I had of course heard of these families, and perceived them as being prominent. Who hadn't heard of C. F. Penn's Hamburgers, Big Bob Gibson's Barbecue, Penn Community or Day's Gap? These seemed to me to be celebrated, time-honored, and well-researched families, while my Duttons seemed rather obscure and forgotten.
And so I wished that my Dutton family was "well-connected," too. And a wish became a compulsion. I had a fundamental misunderstanding about the way family and genealogy work, and a bit of an inferiority complex. I didn't understand that honor comes from within a family, not from without — that a family becomes celebrated because its own members celebrate it, and that the best way to do that is to research it — that I had great relatives, too, whom people loved and remembered. I was a young researcher, unproven, and I feared that people didn't take me seriously. I felt I had to make a name for myself.
Then, I began to light upon evidence that seemed to show a connection between the families of Zachariah Dutton and Stephen Penn, the Penns' Revolutionary progenitor. Both Zachariah Dutton and Stephen Penn originated in Charles County, Maryland. Both moved to North Carolina around the same time. Stephen Penn and Zachariah Dutton's children ended up in the same area of Alabama, and even had adjacent property. Zachariah named a son Stephen Dutton, and his son Edmond named a son Stephen Penn Dutton. Perhaps the Duttons were "well-connected" after all. It seemed too good to be true.
Clearly, there was some connection. But what could it be? Neither the parents of Zachariah Dutton nor Stephen Penn were known, so I could not connect them that way. It was known that Stephen Penn's wife was Mary McKay, but Zachariah Dutton's wife was unknown. And so out of the twofold desire to connect the Duttons to the Penns and to identify Zachariah Dutton's wife, I leapt to the conclusion that Zachariah Dutton's wife was Stephen Penn's sister.
I informed my cousins via e-mail on February 8, 1998. They were delighted, and applauded me. It went to my head. I felt that in one fell swoop, I had established both myself and my family. I was so proud. I wanted to tell everyone. And I did. I repeated it every chance I had, to everyone I could. I repeated it so many times that I began to forget that it was only speculation.
My most shameful moment came late in 1998, when The Heritage of Morgan County, Alabama was published. In the article I submitted on the Duttons, I boldly proclaimed at the start that "Zachariah Dutton married a sister of Stephen Penn." Not "it is believed." Not "it is speculated." In that moment I laid down an entirely unproven statement as immutable fact, in a medium that would be read not only by my own cousins, but by hundreds of others, many of whom would never bother to check the facts. On the Internet, people tend to forget, and statements fade into oblivion, but this book would forever be the public face of Morgan County to the masses.
Then my statements started coming back to me. I began to come into contact with new researchers, who would tell me that Zachariah Dutton married a Penn, with no attribution to any source. At first I was excited. Was this finally proof that my theory was true? Then it dawned on me that I was hearing my own theory echoed back to me as fact. As it passed from person to person, people had forgotten that I was the one who had said it, had forgotten that it wasn't true. Somewhere along the line, Miss Penn picked up a first name: Zachariah Dutton's wife was now Elizabeth Penn. It was like a bad game of telephone. The speculation had gotten away from me.
I stubbornly held to the speculation for several more years. At one point it even cost me a date, when I told a girl named Penn that she was my cousin. Over time I drifted away from the speculation, and began to correct people when I saw it printed, but the damage had been done. I finally removed the speculation from the Dutton website on January 4, 2003.
There is no direct evidence to identify Zachariah Dutton's wife as a Penn. But there is still some evidence to suggest some connection between the Dutton and Penn families:
It is still possible that Zachariah Dutton's wife was a Penn. It is also possible that Zachariah Dutton and Stephen Penn were cousins, brothers, or simply friends. The above evidence warrants no conclusion at this time. I will look forward to the day when one can be made.
In conclusion, I respectfully retract my previous speculation and all statements made in connection therewith. It simply has no basis in fact. If you have it in your notes or in your database, please remove it, or mark it with the proper notation.
There is no way to know how many people now have my false conclusion in their notes or databases, who don't know its origins or its nature. I now deeply regret my bold and brash statements and their consequences, and mark this down as a harsh lesson for a young genealogist. I apologize to you all. It is impossible to undo what was said or written, but in the future I for one will be more careful with bandying around unproven speculations.