After more than 20 years, Steve Skelly of Janesville found long-lost letters, photos, and other personal belongings of Servant of God Joseph Dutton, also known as “Brother Dutton”. They were found in the basement of the St. Jude Parish rectory in Beloit. Skelly, who has been interested in Dutton for more than 40 years, is elated that what he found may help further the cause for Dutton’s canonization.
Skelly’s interest and Dutton’s background
Skelly learned about Dutton through his interest in local Janesville history and the American Civil War. He said, “[Growing up] I really enjoyed reading and hearing stories about the Civil War, and somehow, Dutton showed up.”
Years later, Skelly’s daughter played basketball at the Brother Dutton School in Beloit. “Oh, Brother Dutton,” Skelly remembered. He said, “I started reading more about him [at that point], so Dutton’s always been in the back of my mind, but now he had been brought to the forefront.” This started a search for Dutton’s keepsakes and to learn more about the incredible man.
Dutton, who was originally born in Stowe, Vt., in 1843, moved to Janesville with his family four years later. At the age of 18 in 1861, Dutton enlisted in the 13th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment at the beginning of the American Civil War. After the war, Dutton continued to work for the government, identifying bodies of soldiers and giving them proper burial in
national cemeteries, and he entered a dark decade of his life, becoming a self-described “functioning alcoholic”.
Dutton was received into the Catholic Church on his 40th birthday following his conversion and life-long commitment to abstain from alcohol. Upon his reception in 1883, Dutton sought ways to make amends for the mistakes in his past and answered a call in 1886 to volunteer with Fr. Damien DeVeuster on the island of Molokai, one of the islands in the archipelago of Hawaii.
It was there, on the island of Molokai, where Dutton was given the title of “Brother” affectionately by Father Damien for his work supporting men, women, and children with Hansen’s disease — more commonly known as leprosy. Over the next 44 years of his life, Dutton would never leave the island, always serving the Kalaupapa settlement.
Explaining how he learned more about Dutton and started looking for keepsakes, Steve said, “I started reading about him and thought, ‘This guy should be a saint’. When Father Damien became a saint [in 2009], I was thinking, ‘Well, why isn’t [Brother Dutton] a saint?’ I came across the Joseph Dutton Guild in Hawaii and I thought, ‘Okay, now I’m really going to push to get this done. There’s got to be something here to take and help. There’s got to be something in Janesville or Beloit or somewhere in Rock County that will help the process to sainthood.’”
The Joseph Dutton Guild is an organization that advocates for the beatification and canonization of Brother Dutton. There are two other saints of Molokai, St. Damien DeVeuster and St. Marianne Cope, both raised to sainthood for their work with the Kalaupapa settlement. Skelly is working with the guild by helping the team from Hawaii understand Dutton’s childhood in Wisconsin, collecting and sending Dutton artifacts to Hawaii, and spreading the word about the life and mission of Dutton.
In May of this year, the Catholic Herald published an article on Brother Dutton at the request and with the help of Skelly. “I thought just by getting that [article] in the newspaper, that my job was done. I’ve done everything I can. I haven’t been able to find anything. I’ve done everything I can to help [Dutton’s] path to sainthood . . . No, I wasn’t; [Dutton] wasn’t done with me yet,” Skelly said.
Finding the items
Skelly knew that Dutton artifacts were, or at least had been, in Beloit. Rumors had circulated that there was a lost stash of Dutton’s keepsakes on the St. Jude Parish grounds, which housed the Brother Dutton School. However, “I had no connection there,” said Skelly, which made investigation difficult.
Skelly’s connection came when his daughter, Erin Skelly-Olver, who started a job as Director of Religious Education at St. Jude Parish, asked her father for help cleaning out the parish rectory. In June of this year, Skelly volunteered to help clean out the rectory’s basement.
Skelly said, in the basement “nothing had ever been thrown away. There was room after room after room of stuff that needed to be sifted through and cleared out.”
While digging, Skelly found informational posters that someone created in the 1980s, photo static copies of Dutton’s letters, and copies of pictures of Dutton. At first, Skelly thought he found the lost stash. He said, “I was happy that we found it. Then, the more I looked at it, the more I thought, ‘is this all there is? We’ve been hoping to find something and it’s just photo static copies of some stuff and a bulletin board?’”
Feeling a little disappointed, Skelly moved on to the next space and worked on cleaning out the coal chute. The chute had a large steel door, low ceiling, and, importantly, was waterproof, which meant it housed precious items of the parish. Skelly was carrying boxes out of the space when, “I hit my head and busted the light out. We got a new light bulb and put it in, but glass was on the ground.” While Skelly was sweeping up the glass, he “looked over and saw these boxes that said ‘personal belongings of Joseph Dutton’. Inside, I went, ‘bing, bing, bing, bing, bing’. I could barely talk because there they were,” said Skelly. “We’ve been looking for 30 years — we, meaning the world — looking for more information for the sainthood [of Joseph Dutton] and here they are.”
Going through the boxes
After Skelly’s find, he was granted responsibility of the boxes for safekeeping. Steve Skelly immediately called his cousin Pete, who is an avid historian and shares in Steve’s love of Dutton. Steve said, “I called Pete on the phone. I said, ‘Pete, you’ve got to come over here and see this.’”
After seeing the content of the boxes, Pete said, “I spent two weeks in what I’m calling ‘history heaven.’ There were lots of pictures of Dutton when he was a young boy that no one had seen before. There were 13th Wisconsin regiment pictures that people hadn’t saved.”
One of the most notable pieces of information were photos of Dutton’s funeral in Hawaii. When the pictures of Dutton’s funeral were sent to the Joseph Dutton Guild, “they said they’d never seen any of those pictures before.”
Pete continued, “There were letters he wrote. Dutton was a prolific writer and had lots of friends back in Janesville. He would write to his old army buddies.” From those letters back home, “Steve and I managed to piece together a few extra visits to Janesville, [Dutton] made before Hawaii and after the Civil War. [We know] he loved his mother; he came back [to Janesville after the Civil War] when she was Baptized. It’s small potatoes to some people, but to local history and the bigger ‘Dutton picture,’ it adds color and substance to who he was. Everything to make a fuller picture of this man is in [those boxes],” Pete added.
The collection phase of Dutton artifacts is coming to an end. Some of the artifacts found by Steve Skelly are being submitted by the Diocese of Honolulu to Rome for evaluation, in the effort to beatify and canonize Dutton. The cousins said, “It makes us feel really cool. We’re adding to the big picture that will be sent to Rome. It might not be the ‘thing’ that makes it official, but any little tidbit helps.”
In 2024, Steve and Pete will travel to Hawaii at different times of the year. Steve has been asked to visit in honor of his work with the Joseph Dutton Guild. Both have been granted special permission to visit the island of Molokai, which continues to house residents in the Kalaupapa settlement. Visiting Molokai and the grave of Brother Dutton are lifetime goals of the cousins.
