What about the Maine Dutton - LaBree Connection

Over the past year Harv and Dale have discovered new resting places for some Dutton-LaBree family members in Maine. As most of you know, Nancy LaBree Dutton followed two of her sons, John (Phillipsburg) and William (Avis) to Pennsylvania where she spent the rest of her days living with one or the other of them. Nothing more was ever known about the LaBree / Dutton family, that lived in Maine, until recently.
Through Dale's research it was discovered the original Dutton to come to Maine was John Dutton, who migrated from Billerica, MA to Starks, ME and he died there in 1818. Members of the Dutton family lived in other towns in that immediate area - Abbot, Parkman, Industry and Kingfield to name some. Our line of the LaBree family also migrated to that same area of the state - Cambridge, Abbot, Parkman to name three towns.


Last summer, as Harv and Dale were driving through Abbot from Moosehead Lake they stopped at an old cemetery on the main road to explore - not looking for anyone in particular. By coincidence Harv stumbled right onto Thomas Jefferson Dutton 1806-1863 (Nancy LaBree's father-in-law) and Thomas's mother Louis (Young) Dutton 1769-1853.
Later that summer they went to Industry and found the grave of Josiah Dutton 1770-1862 (Thomas Jefferson Dutton's father / Louis's husband). Pictures of their graves are in the slide show, right column. Josiah's grave is in an old cemetery located on a back road that is situated on the Industry / Starks town line. So happened a friend of Dale's has a camp on that road and she had actually explored the cemetery years before without realizing the connection. Josiah's father John Dutton 1738-1818 was the first to migrate to (Starks) Maine from Massachusetts before 1790. Suspect he was a Revolutionary War veteran but that remains to be seen.


Nancy LaBree Dutton's husband - Thomas Franklin Dutton - had been a BIG mystery for a long time as no one in the family ever really heard or knew what became of him. Dale found that he had entered the Civil War at age 19, left Nancy at home in Maine with five children, and never returned. He ended up in Thompson, CT with another family and is buried there with his 2nd wife. That explains why Nancy had to depend on her sons for support and also why she never talked about her husband Thomas. We are still searching for more info about Thomas and Nancy (LaBree) Dutton to determine if they were ever really married or divorced. Hopefully time will help unweave their story!


Harv and Dale are still hoping to find the resting places for John Dutton (the first to migrate to Maine) who died in Starks in 1818; and also plan to track down Thomas Labree, died 1871 in Cambridge, ME.; his father James who died 1831 in Wales, ME; his father Pierre LaBree who died 1851 (age 96) in Rockingham County, NH. By the way - Pierre LaBree was born in Georgetown, Maine and moved to Mount Desert Island at age 12 (then called Acadia, New France). He was aboard Capt. Eleazer Crabtree's brigantine ship the Tyrannicide that fought against the British at the Penobscot Expedition, Bagaduce Peninsula (Castine) - but that is another story for another time!!